


Sting

by adrienregreste



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-09-29 15:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17205734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrienregreste/pseuds/adrienregreste
Summary: Google had told Kagami Tsurugi that Chloe Bourgeois was a grade A bitch. When she moves to Paris from Kyoto, she instead finds the Chloe Bourgeois who is a decent person. Once the two meet, both of their worlds turn into floods and they're pulling each other down further into the unknown waters. Maybe they'll drown, maybe they'll float. Who knows?





	1. Music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [t0astybuns](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=t0astybuns).



> This is my MLSS 2018 gift for Tumblr user @t0astybuns!!  
> A/N: in this work, none of the superheroes know each other's identity except for Ladybug, who knows everyone's except Chat's. In other words, Chloe didn't pull her stunt from Queen Bee in my fic. Just wanted 2 clear that up. :-)

_She loves when everybody’s watchin’_  
_She knows the way her body moves_  
_She loves the way they all crawl back when she says_  
_That she loves nobody else but you_

Chloe sits cross-legged on the floor, gazing out of the large, open windows in her bedroom. She leans her back against the back of her pink plush couch, trying hard not to let her thoughts wander, but not with a very high rate of success. Beside her, Sabrina is laying on her stomach, working on her physics homework and humming along to the music as it plays softly from the bluetooth speaker. Neither of them have said anything for a while. 

Chloe turns her attention to Sabrina. She’s working diligently, her pen gliding elegantly across her paper, her eyes slightly squinted in focus. She knows by now that Sabrina basically enters her own world when she’s focused on something; a tornado could tear through the hotel and she’d be absolutely none the wiser.

It’s one of many things that Chloe admires about her.

She feels a twinge of guilt in her stomach as she watches her best friend work. Chloe had, up until about six months ago, always treated her like shit; making her do Chloe’s homework, manipulating and gaslighting her, lying to her--the works. A few things have happened since then to change that: Chloe’s mom suddenly returning from New York, for one. That was the weekend of the fashion show held in Paris, but more importantly, the weekend Chloe received the Bee Miraculous. Her mom wound up getting akumatized (little to Chloe’s surprise, really) into Style Queen, the first intangible akuma that required the power of subjection.

That was Chloe’s first real conversation with Ladybug, and the day she immediately fell in love.

One whole day later, her father was akumatized into Malediktator. Queen Bee’s powers were needed again, so there she was, single-handedly pulling her family together in the form of a superhero. That weekend, her entire world fell apart, and it was a huge wake-up call for her. That night, after she was done saving the world and what have you, she sat in her room and cried for three hours. She hadn’t cried like that in a very, very long time.  
And, somehow, it was like with every tear, every sob, the cruelty within her was released. After all was said and done, she had no idea what else to do, so she called Adrien on FaceTime. They talked until almost two in the morning.

Their FaceTime calls became more frequent with time, and so did Chloe’s recovery.

And, despite how difficult all of that was to process, the hardest thing for Chloe to do was sit down with Sabrina and apologise.  
And Sabrina, for God knows what reason, decided to work to forgive Chloe and remain friends with her. 

“I always knew you were a good person, deep down.” she’d told her gently, “I’m not gonna lie, you’ve put me through hell, Chlo. But, y’know, if you’re willing to try to change, I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

Chloe blinked at her, fighting back tears. “You’re...still going to be friends with me? Why?”  
Sabrina smiled softly at her. “You probably need friends more than ever now. And, well, I’m already here. Adrien and I are both here, at the very least.” Sabrina lowered her eyes, ever so slightly. “It’ll take me time to forgive you, but I’m still not going anywhere.”

Chloe finds herself having to will away tears again at the memory. _God, when did I become such a crybaby?_

Sabrina is one of those people who gives endless second chances, even if she knows the person isn’t worth it. If Chloe mistreats her again, she’ll still get another chance. And another. And another. Which is why she has to work her ass off to never do that again. Sabrina doesn’t deserve it. Chloe’s phone begins to ring in her pocket, startling her out of her thoughts and making her jump dramatically. Sabrina doesn’t even look up.

Pulling it out of her pocket, she sees that Adrien is trying to FaceTime her. She’s a little surprised; it’s been a while since they’ve done that. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have thought twice about answering it and electing to ignore Sabrina for the rest of the night. 

Now, she lets it finish ringing and sends Adrien a quick _I’ll call you later_ text. She then scoots closer to where Sabrina is laying and gently pokes her cheek.

“Hey, do you wanna take a break and get some snacks from the restaurant?”

The petite redhead blinks up at her. “Yeah, that’s probably a good ide--wait.” She sits up on her knees and squints at Chloe through her brown-rimmed glasses. “Where’s your homework? I thought you’d been working on it this whole time, too.”

Chloe lazily points a finger behind her. “It’s sitting on the couch. I finished it right after school so I wouldn’t have to do it over the weekend.”

Sabrina stares at her with a mixture of shock and relief in her eyes. She lets out a tiny, breathless chuckle. “Wow, I...I guess I’m still getting used to your responsible side.”

Chloe’s heart falls a little bit when she realizes Sabrina probably thought she’d be forced to do her homework again. She shakes her head and puts a hand on her best friend’s shoulder.

“Hey,” she says reassuringly, “I won’t ever make you do my homework again. Promise.”

Sabrina smiles weakly. “It’s just taking me a while to get used to,” she repeats. Perking up, she adds, “So, how about some snacks?”

The girls stand up. Chloe’s knees hurt from her legs being crossed for so long. She winces, trying to stretch them out before following Sabrina to the elevator.

 

 

+++

Chloe and Sabrina find themselves sitting on Chloe’s couch, surrounded by bags of tortilla chips and mini doughnuts. A warm bowl of queso blanco sits on the coffee table in front of them. The second episode of Sailor Moon plays on Chloe’s 70-inch TV. Sailor Moon is Sabrina’s all-time favorite show, and she’d recently gotten Chloe into it.

Needless to say, she was hooked immediately.

From the beginning of the first episode, the character Sailor Moon reminded her of Ladybug. Could that have contributed to how much she likes the show? Possibly. Really, it just makes her think about Ladybug every time she and Sabrina watch it together. Ladybug’s silky dark hair, her sky-blue eyes, her gentle voice...those kissable pink lips that Chloe definitely does not spend all her time thinking about. 

She doesn’t know how to accept that Ladybug’s heart will never belong to her. At least, she doesn’t know how to accept it in a healthy way. Before, she tried forcing herself to have feelings for Adrien, violently protecting him from other girls to try and prove something to herself. She forced herself into denial for almost a whole year. She took everything out on everyone around her. Her whole life was always on fire.  
Now, she’s wading through the ashes and trying her best to build it new. She’s relearning how to process things in a healthy way.

She remembers finally accepting her feelings for Ladybug. She’d left her house as Queen Bee and sought solace on a random rooftop. It didn’t take Ladybug long to find her.

 

_“Queen Bee!”_

_Chloe quickly wiped the tears from her eyes before turning around. Just behind her, Ladybug landed swiftly on her feet, catching her yoyo as it retracted and placing it in its invisible holster on her lower back._

_“Hey, Ladybug,” Chloe greeted, trying not to sound as miserable as she felt._

_Ladybug saw right through it. “What’s wrong? I was on patrol and I saw you sitting out here all alone.”_

_Chloe was sitting, transformed, on top of a tall building. She’d been there for at least an hour already, trying to make things make sense. “Nothing’s wrong!” she smiled up at Ladybug. “I just like to get out of the house sometimes. It’s crowded in there.”_

_Ladybug raised an eyebrow at her. “May I sit?” she asked._

_Chloe nodded reluctantly. The red-and-black goddess of a human sat gracefully down beside her._

_“That’s what Chat always tells me,” Ladybug stated simply, “when I catch him sitting by himself on a rooftop. He says he wanted out of the house, just to get some fresh air. But I always know there’s something wrong. So, I sit with him for a while.”_

_Ladybug stretched her arms up, slowly leaning backwards to lay on her back, looking up at the stars._

_“Sometimes he talks about it. Sometimes he doesn’t. What matters to me is that he knows I’m here for him.”_

_Chloe forced herself not to look down at her. Keeping her gaze fixed forward, she asked, “What...what’s your point?”_

_Ladybug chuckled. “My point is that I’m here for you, too, silly.”_

_Chloe wasn’t used to hearing those words. Hearing them from Ladybug made her heart flutter uncontrollably. She was almost worried that Ladybug would hear her heartbeat quickening._

_“If you want, you can lay back with me,” Ladybug suggested, “and we can talk about it. Or we can talk about something to distract you.”_

_Chloe swallowed. She’s not flirting with you. She just said she does this same thing with Chat Noir._

_She slowly let herself fall backwards until her back met the cool metal of the building’s roof. Her suit must have had some sort of protective heat built in, because no part of her except the back of her neck felt cold from it. She sighed softly._

_“So, Bee, what’s on your mind?”_

_Bee._

_Chloe sighed again, deeply this time. Ladybug’s presence had actually made her forget what was wrong for a little while._

_“It’s...my best friend. If I can even call her that. I don’t deserve to call her that,” Chloe began. “Y’know, I’ve been really shitty to her. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Everyone has. But...for the past few weeks, since everything happened with my parents and getting this Miraculous,” she pointed up at the comb in her hair, “I’ve been trying to get better. Really trying this time.  
“I’d been thinking about sitting down with her and apologising for a while, but earlier tonight I bit the bullet and did it for real.”_

_She stopped there, choking back a lump in her throat._

_“And…” Ladybug encouraged._

_“And she forgave me.”_

_Ladybug didn’t say anything for a moment, like she was caught off guard._

_After a few minutes of quiet, “Well, you’re talking about Sabrina, right? Sabrina has always had a really forgiving heart. I’m not surprised that she forgave you. I’m glad she did.”_

_“No, you don’t get it.” Chloe said quietly, trying to hide the tears in her words. “You’re right. Sabrina Raincomprix always forgives. That’s the problem. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness this time. I deserve for her to be angry with me. I deserve for her to hate me. She’ll keep giving me second chances until I completely destroy her.” Chloe had stopped trying to hide the tears at this point. She turned her head, looking weakly into Ladybug’s eyes. “I don’t trust myself with all those chances. I want to be better, but that doesn’t mean I will be.”_

_“Hey,” Ladybug said, almost in a cooing voice. She sat up and held her arm out. “Come here.”_

_Chloe sniffled and sat up. Ladybug wrapped her extended arm around Chloe’s shoulder._

_“If this helps at all,” Ladybug spoke quietly, “you’ve gotten better with your Miraculous. You don’t misuse it anymore. You’re careful with its power and you keep it safe while you wear it.”_

_Chloe hummed in response. Ladybug continued._

_“I think the same will happen with Sabrina. You’ll be careful with her now. The fact that you want to be better says a lot already.”_

_Ladybug kept her arm around Chloe until she stopped crying and calmed down a bit. Chloe had never felt more comforted in her life. She felt safe._

_Ladybug gave Chloe’s shoulder a little squeeze before letting go._

_“Thank you, Ladybug,” Chloe murmured, wiping her eyes one last time. “I owe you one, huh?”_

_“Pfft, no. You’re my friend, Bee. Friends help other friends through things for free.”_

_Chloe giggled, a little dazed from crying. She felt a million times lighter, like everything really was going to be okay._

_“Bee,” she repeated. “I like that.”_

_Ladybug grinned sweetly at Chloe. “Yeah. I have little nicknames for all my heroes. Chat, Rena, Cara, and Bee. Carapace is...a little uncreative, but I’m stubborn about my nicknames. Plus, Chat calls me Bug sometimes, so I guess I have one too.”_

_Chloe’s heart fluttered again. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at Ladybug, her starlit eyes and the way the moon made her black hair look slightly blue._

_She was still smiling softly at Chloe._

_In that moment? Chloe knew she had it bad. There was no denying it anymore. After a few more minutes of chatter, Ladybug took her leave. She swung herself across the city with her yoyo, moving until she was out of sight, taking Chloe’s heart with her._

“Chloe?”

Chloe twitches, Sabrina’s voice drawing her back into the present. Looking at the TV, she sees that she’s missed a couple of episodes since zoning out.

“Are you okay? I kinda noticed you were staring at nothing for a bit.” Sabrina has concern in her voice. What is Chloe supposed to tell her? _Oh, yeah, I’ve just been thinking about how I don’t deserve you as a friend, and also about how in love with Ladybug I am._

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I just...got a little lost in thought,” Chloe answers truthfully. Sabrina raises an unconvinced eyebrow at her.

“You always seem to be out of it when we watch this,” Sabrina remarks, finally reaching for the remote and pausing the show. 

Chloe dips a tortilla chip into the queso, shoving it into her mouth and practically swallowing the thing before chewing it. She breaks into a coughing fit, and Sabrina shoots her another concerned glance from the other side of the couch.

“Sorry,” Chloe mutters. She clears her throat. “I guess...watching TV gives me a lot of time to think about things. Not even in a bad way, really, I just can’t shut my brain off. It’s like when you’re trying to sleep but your brain is going at 100 miles per hour.”

Sabrina turns herself towards Chloe, crossing her legs underneath her. “Well, we can always do other things, besides watching TV. Like video games, or something like that.”

Chloe does her best to smile at her. Sabrina is always trying so hard to fix things for people. She’s truly got a heart of gold.

_But would she still want you around if she knew you liked girls?_

The thought hits Chloe like a train, full-force and completely unexpected. Anxiety grips her stomach and the chips and queso are suddenly not sitting well.

Nobody, _nobody_ , knows that Chloe is a lesbian. It’s a part of her she holds under lock and key, worried that every single good thing she has will leave her if she comes out. Her parents will probably kick her out and cut her off. Adrien will stop wanting to talk to her. Her classmates will hate her even more than they already do. Ladybug will force her to give back her Miraculous. 

And then Chloe will die alone.

Sabrina probably wouldn’t have even come over if she’d known.

Chloe doesn’t notice that she’s got a death grip on the couch cushion beneath her. She feels her chest clenching and her breath shortening. _Shit. Shit shit shit._

When her thoughts spiral out of control like this, she tries to reason with herself, sitting herself down and doing deep breathing exercises. Only, she can’t do that right now, with Sabrina sitting a few feet away from her. _Maybe I can sneak into the bathroom._

Chloe doesn’t realize she’s nearly hyperventilating until Sabrina is suddenly right by her side, her hand placed delicately on her shoulder. “Chloe? What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Her words come in a flurry to Chloe’s brain. She tries not to speak for fear that she’ll burst into tears. Up until now, she’s managed not to have panic episodes in front of Sabrina. She didn’t get away quickly enough this time.

Beside her, Sabrina’s gone quiet, letting Chloe cry shakily into her hands, just like Ladybug did that night several months ago. 

_All this over me being gay. Jesus._

The room is spinning. The lights are too bright. The quiet is too loud. Everything is falling apart. Chloe is sure she’s going crazy. Sabrina wraps both arms around her shoulders now, and Chloe eats it up. She needs it. They sit like that for a long time.

When Chloe speaks, her voice is hoarse from fighting the lump in her throat.  
“I have no right to be this miserable.”

Sabrina doesn’t let her go yet. “What makes you say that?” 

“I have everything I want and I live in the top floor of a hotel that my father owns. I have no right to be feeling like this,” Chloe mumbles. On one of her late-night mental health journeys through Google, she read that even highly privileged people could have anxiety. “Anxiety halts to no one, regardless of their social or financial status,” the blog post read. Chloe tries to use that knowledge to ebb away the guilt of being a rich white girl with anxiety, but it hasn’t been working very well. It especially isn’t helping right now.

She gently pries herself out of Sabrina’s arms and hugs her knees tightly to her chest. Sabrina repositions herself beside her. She hasn’t said anything in response, as though she’s waiting for Chloe to continue.

Chloe steals a glance at her. Her clear turquoise eyes are calmly trained on Chloe’s. She’s wearing the T-shirt Chloe bought her from the XY concert they went to together. Her short red hair is tied back in the world’s tiniest ponytail. Chloe realizes they’re both wearing the matching sweatpants Sabrina bought them last Christmas; black with a green paw print on the upper thigh for Sabrina, and black with Ladybug’s yoyo design on the upper thigh for Chloe. Her heart swells a little bit. This night is supposed to feel safe. Does she dare ruin that by coming out?

Because, after her panic attack--that was _literally_ caused by the thought of coming out-- the words, _“Hey, I’m into girls,”_ are on the tip of her tongue, for some fucking reason. It’s all she wants to do.

She takes a mental step back. 

“I...have no right feeling like this,” she repeats, “because other people have it way worse than I do. I’ve been having these crazy anxiety episodes since my mom came home and since I apologised to you about everything, and I don’t know where they came from or how to make them stop. There’s no reason for there to be anything wrong with me, y’know?”

Chloe expects Sabrina to agree with her. Instead, she says, “That’s not true.”

Chloe stares wildly at her. “What? How?”

Sabrina adjusts her glasses. “A number of reasons. Your mom leaving you as a kid and then suddenly coming back definitely could’ve triggered something. Trying to act like everything is fine all your life, pushing down all that fear from when you were a kid...well, feelings don’t stay buried forever.”

Chloe just blinks at her. Everything she said makes so much sense that Chloe can’t believe she hasn’t considered it before herself. In her head, two puzzle pieces connect for the very first time. “How did you do that?”

Sabrina shoots her a confused look. “Do what?”

“You just, like, figured all of that out on the spot.” Chloe feels like she’s naked. She feels like Sabrina is looking at her exposed brain. 

Sabrina wraps her arms around herself, leaning back into the couch. “Well, I, uh, I see a therapist. She’s taught me a lot about stuff like this.” Sabrina chuckles softly. “I could probably give a free therapy session, with all the mental health stuff I’m familiar with now.”

 _Please do._ Chloe internally begs her. She wants to feel that sense of epiphany from Sabrina’s words again. It feels so good to suddenly understand something about herself, but Chloe knows she doesn’t need to be treating Sabrina like a therapist. She keeps her mouth shut.

Seemingly reading her mind, Sabrina asks, “Do you want me to try that with you?”

Chloe shakes her head quickly. “No, I don’t wanna dump more of my issues on you. I should be the one offering you therapy, after...well, everything.” 

Sabrina leans forward, a smile on her glossed lips. “Okay, I have an idea, then.”

“What is it?”

“I give you ten minutes of free therapy, and then you give me ten minutes of free therapy?”

“What?” Chloe immediately protests. “I don’t know anything about therapy! And I’m still getting the hang of the whole Being-Nice-To-People thing.”

She’s halfway joking when she says it.

Sabrina laughs, which makes Chloe feel good. “I know. I’ll just talk about something for a few minutes, and let you listen. You don’t even have to say anything. I’ll let you talk first.”

Chloe sighs quietly. She trusts Sabrina. 

“Okay.”

“Awesome!” Sabrina exclaims. She then straightens her posture in an exaggerated way, folding her arms across her chest. 

“So, the rules of therapy are,” she starts, speaking in a deep, almost British accent. It makes Chloe laugh.

“...that you can tell me anything, and it’s kept confidential, just between you and me. Shall we begin?”

Still giggling a little, Chloe nods. She feels a catch in her throat when she realizes what Sabrina said. “You can tell me anything, and it’s kept confidential, just between you and me.”  
Technically, that’s how every secret shared between them is. But hearing Sabrina say it out loud makes Chloe wonder how she’d react if she told her about her sexuality during the “session.”

_Am I gonna do it?_

Sabrina gazes at her, expectantly.

_I’m gonna do it._

Heart on fire, she inhales deeply, letting the words flow out during her exhalation. 

“Well, to start, I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian.”


	2. Fire

“Kagami Tsurugi.”

Kagami watches her name roll off the blond boy’s tongue. She’s only lived in Paris for a week, but she’s already grown used to the way her name is said in French dialect. _Kaga-mi._ As opposed to the way her mother says it. _Ka-gami._

The boy lets out a scarcely audible chuckle. “Like the family of world-renowned fencers?”

Kagami nods politely, though she’s grown tired of people asking her that. Ever since she moved here with her family, it’s been, _“Tsurugi? That’s a household name in the fencing world!”_ and, _“I bet you’ve got suitors lined up at your door with a bloodline like that,”_ and, _“You’re so lucky to have been born into that family.”_ Kagami holds her breath, preparing herself for a flurry of questions and commentary. But instead of saying any more about it, the boy extends a hand to her. 

“I’m Adrien Agreste. It’s nice to meet you.”

 _Agreste?_ “As in the son of Gabriel Agreste, famous fashion designer?” She intends to come across as playful and sarcastic, but the words come out dryly. Kagami doesn’t get the chance to crack jokes very often, so her skill in the field of humor is…lacking.

Adrien nods, smiling at her. Objectively, he’s perfect; round, boyish face, thin figure, broad shoulders, golden hair, and sparkling green eyes. He’s a picturesque example of the western idea of a teenage boy. He’s exactly the type of boy Kagami’s mother would want her to marry. _“Kagami, an attractive fencer for a husband is ideal. We need more beautiful and skilled children in this family,”_ she can practically hear her mother now.

Sighing, Adrien plops down on the bench beside them, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. Kagami stands, hesitant, but joins him after a moment. She smooths her red plaid skirt and sets her bag down in front of her. The two are waiting inside of the school for their rides home. Kagami’s bodyguard, Himari, is usually waiting outside as soon as fencing practice is over. That’s how she’s avoided making friends within the D’Argencourt Fencing Academy thus far; she walks in, practices, and walks out. Today, though, Himari is running late. And it’s raining, or Kagami would be waiting outside.

“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me,” Adrien says, eyes still closed. The school is completely empty, save for a few custodians, so his voice echoes quietly off the walls. “Usually, the people I meet already know who I am. It’s…actually refreshing that you don’t.”

Kagami tilts her head at him. “Why would I have already known who you are?”

Adrien opens his eyes and turns his head slightly towards her. “You haven’t seen the millions of billboards with my face on them? I model my father’s brand sometimes. Most recently, they’ve named a perfume after me.”

He sounds a little self-absorbed in the way he says it. Kagami wrinkles her nose.

“I haven’t,” she says coolly. “I haven’t even lived here for a week, and I’m not allowed to leave our house unless it’s for fencing practice. I’m not exactly one to take in the scenery, either.”

Adrien shifts, shrinking a little in his seat. “Yeah…sorry. I didn’t think about that. I didn’t mean to sound rude or anything.” He’s got a gentle look in his eyes.

Kagami feels herself soften a little. Maybe she should cut him some slack; he’s part of a famous family, too, after all. Maybe he isn’t allowed out either. Maybe he doesn’t have friends, and maybe he doesn’t know how to make jokes. Maybe he’s like her.

She does her best to smile at him. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “I guess it’s good that I haven’t seen the billboards, though, huh?”

Adrien chuckles, his thick blond hair bouncing lightly as he nods at her. His smile fades a little when he hears his phone chime in his pocket. He pulls it out, letting out a long sigh; one of those sighs that you can tell has been held in for a while.

Adrien gathers his bags and slings one over each shoulder, standing to his feet. He glances down at Kagami.

“I’ve gotta go,” Adrien tells her like she hadn’t just watched him collect his stuff and stand up.  
Kagami considers making a joke about it but ultimately decides against it.

“Okay, I’ll see you at the next practice,” she says instead.

“See ya,” Adrien replies over his shoulder as he makes his way out of the school. Out of Kagami’s sight, the front doors close with a thud.

She lets herself relax as he leaves, puffing her cheeks out in deep exhalation. She doesn’t know how to act around people her age and had felt on edge the whole time Adrien was talking to her. As soon as practice was over, she’d noticed they were the only two left, everyone else already having gone home. She hoped he would leave her alone, but, well. Part of her is glad he talked to her. Part of her hopes they can be friends. And still, a third part of her hopes he forgets about her and never speaks to her again.

 _Ding._ Kagami’s phone beeps at her from the pocket of her skirt. 

It’s Himari.

 _I’m outside,_ the text reads in Japanese.

 _Coming,_ Kagami replies.

 

+++

 

“How was practice?”

Kagami and Himari always speak to each other in Japanese. Both of them are more than familiar with English and French, but Kagami’s mother fears that Kagami will forget how to speak Japanese if she fully immerses herself in either language.

Himari was hired as her bodyguard because of her multilingual abilities. Himari is also very well trained in martial arts, but it was her niche for languages that sold Kagami’s mother.  
“You’ll need to at least be able to understand French if we’re going to live here for a while,” her mother had said. “But no matter what, you need to speak in your mother tongue as often as you can.”

So, they always speak in Japanese.

“It was fine,” Kagami answers from the backseat of the car. “I seem to be the only person there who’s sure of myself. Everyone is so easy to beat.”

Himari smirks at her in the rearview mirror. “They probably haven’t been training since they were three years old like you have.”

Kagami’s extended family has a running joke that she and her two older siblings came out of the womb holding a sabre. As irritating as it is, they’re really not too far off; as soon as Kagami could walk and talk, her parents had started teaching her anything they could about fencing. The three Tsurugi siblings are untouchable with the amount of training they’ve had. 

She misses her siblings more than anything.

Kagami just sighs in response to Himari, leaning her head against the window and watching the rainy city go by.

“Listen, Kagami,” Himari says as she swivels the steering wheel in a left turn, “there’s something I wanted to warn you about.”

Kagami straightens her posture, slightly leaning forward. Her pace quickens, every possible negative outcome coursing through her head. _I’m not doing well enough in fencing. I’m failing my French class. I’m getting kicked out of my house. My mother wants to marry me off at the ripe old age of fourteen._

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Your mother and I were talking earlier today,” Himari speaks in sighs. “And, she told me that she wants you to start focusing more on your studies.” Himari meets Kagami’s eyes in the rearview mirror. 

Kagami feels the anxiety multiplying in her chest. _So I did fail a class. Perfect. There goes my free time._

“That’s...not all, though,” Himari continues. She hesitates, like she’s choosing her words carefully. “She wants you to go to university.”

Confusion now replaces anxiety in Kagami’s chest. “What? Why would I need to do that? I..I won’t need a degree for Olympics tryouts.”

“That’s just it,” Himari replies. “She doesn’t want you to try out. And...she doesn’t want you to be in the D’Argencourt academy anymore, either.” A brief pause, another sigh. “She wants you to attend public school.”

“She wants me to _what?”_

The car pulls up to the front gate of the Tsurugi mansion. Himari puts it in park, and turns around to face Kagami.

“I know we haven’t known each other for a long time at all, but...well, I’ve already learned that your mother can be difficult to deal with. I wanted you to hear the news from me first, so she couldn’t catch you off guard.”

Kagami feels a little dizzy. She hasn’t processed anything she’s just heard. “I don’t understand,” she mumbles. “My mother would die before pulling me out of fencing. My father would, too. It’s…their whole life purpose to keep the Tsurugi name alive in the fencing world.”

“I wish I could make it make sense for you, Kagami. I’m sorry.”

Kagami stares at the handle of the car door, struggling to believe a word Himari just said. Surely she misheard. Surely it was some sort of miscommunication between her and Kagami’s mother. _My mother would die before pulling me out of fencing._

She doesn’t want to get out. She wants to travel back in time to an hour ago, when she was kicking ass at practice and completely oblivious to the fact that her parents had apparently lost their minds.

Most of her doesn’t believe anything Himari just said, though. _She probably misheard._

She places her hand on the handle and gently pulls it toward her. Before she steps out of the car, she pauses.

“Thank you for telling me in advance, Himari,” she mutters. Himari nods solemnly at her.

Kagami stands and watches the car disappear en route to the parking garage before she enters her mansion’s gate.

_Fuck. Jesus fuck._

She marches herself through the massive building straight into her bedroom, thrusting her fencing bag down on the floor. She places her hands on either side of her head, sinking down to the floor and letting out a long, deep breath. It’s a maneuver one of her old fencing instructors had taught her a couple of years ago. She’d used to be a “tactile therapist,” focusing on the body more than the mind. She told Kagami that the technique helped ease the energy of stress in the body. Kagami was skeptical at first, but it worked like magic on her the first time she tried it. Her instructor taught her several other calming techniques from her years in therapy until Kagami’s mother found out and fired her on the spot.

“You can’t form personal relationships with your instructors,” she’d said. “They can’t teach you that way.”

Kagami still uses the therapeutic practices behind her mother’s back, though. They’re the only things that keep her head on straight, sometimes.

As she sits still on the plush rug beneath her, she allows herself to feel present. _“Just let yourself feel whatever you feel. Don’t try to chase it off, that only makes it worse. Let yourself feel, and feel how the stress ebbs away.”_

And it does.

But she’s still so confused, and a little hurt. She moves her hands from her head to play with a loose string at the hem of her skirt. 

Why the hell would her parents do something like this? They both live and breathe fencing. 

They’ve told Kagami many times that “her destiny lies in the swing of her rapier.” Hell, they never even gave her the chance to decide if she _liked_ fencing; they just said, “Hey, you will be a fencer,” and Kagami replied, “Yes, I will.”

Why would they take away the very thing they’ve sworn for her since she was born?

“Kagami?” calls her mother’s voice outside her bedroom door. Kagami scrambles onto her feet and opens it before her mother has the chance to.

She holds the door open, clinging tightly to the doorknob.

“Yes, mother?”

Her mother strides through the threshold without saying anything. Kagami eases the door shut behind her.

“I’m not dropping out of the academy,” Kagami hears herself say. She says it bitterly, in a tone that she’s never used with either of her parents before.

Shit. She wasn’t supposed to know Himari told me. _Dammit._

Her mother turns to face her. “I figured she would tell you. She’s too eager to befriend you.”

A pause.

“Kagami, you’re in a fencing class with that Agreste boy,” her mother states emotionlessly. Kagami feels anger coming alive inside her like a sparkler. 

“I’m sure you’ve been too focused on your training to talk to him, but he models for his father, Gabriel.”

The sparkler catches fire in Kagami’s chest. She knows exactly where this is going.  
Her mother sighs, still emotionless in her tone. “Last week, Gabriel sought me out to ask about you. He told me he was honored to have you in a fencing class with his son. He holds you in high regard.”

Kagami stares out of her window, worried that she’ll start crying. She can’t be married off. She can’t have her few freedoms taken away from her.

She can’t force feelings that she doesn’t have. 

“Kagami, please look at me when I’m talking to you.”

She does as she’s told. Her mother’s dark brown eyes scorch into her own.

“He wants you to model his new line of fencing gear.”

Kagami blinks, drowning in a brand new wave of confusion. She runs the words through her head a few times, praying to anything that she heard wrong.

“He...wants me to…” is all she can manage to say before she chokes up. She doesn’t know whether she should laugh or cry.

“Obviously he already has his own son to model the boys’ line,” her mother continues, as though she hasn’t just broken Kagami’s whole world. “But he needs someone to model the girls’ line, too.”

Kagami disorientedly moves backward until she’s sitting on her bed. She stares at the floor, now completely unable to look her mother in the eyes.

“So you’re selling me off,” Kagami whispers.

Her mother places her hands delicately on her slender hips. “Kagami, don’t be dramatic like that. Your father and I think it would be an excellent opportunity for you to branch out. Trying new things is important.”

Kagami feels something snap in her brain, a dam bursting with little to no warning.

 _“Trying new things?”_ she yells, her hands involuntarily balling into fists. _“Who are you? What happened to my destiny lies in my rapier? What’s going on?”_

Hot tears fill her entire field of vision, making everything look like she’s in a dream. _A nightmare, hopefully._

“Kagami, do _not_ use that tone with me,” her mother scolds in an infuriatingly calm tone of voice. 

“And what does that have to do with me going to university?” Kagami demands. “Himari told me you were pulling me out to make me get a better education!” 

Her mother shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have told that bodyguard,” she mutters, massaging her temples and not bothering to answer Kagami’s question. 

“Do you have any idea how insane this sounds to me?” Kagami spits. She slumps her shoulders, staring down at the maroon rug on the floor. Her entire body is buzzing. 

Her mother crosses her arms over her chest. “This is what’s best for you, Kagami. We can’t limit your skills to fencing like we did with Mei and Kouichi.” 

“You’re ruining the one thing our family is known for,” Kagami says icily. “Fencing has taken up my entire life. There’s never been anything _but_ fencing. You’re taking away everything I know and...and expecting me to go right along with it. I don’t know the first damn thing about modeling!” 

“Don’t use that language!” Kagami’s mother exclaims. She shakes her head exasperatedly as though she’s talking to an idiot. “This won’t be the end of the world. You’ll make your own money from modeling. You’ll have more free time. I honestly thought you’d be excited about the news.” 

Kagami crosses her arms tightly over her chest and turns her head to the window again. 

“Then you don’t know anything about me at all, mother.” 

Kagami’s mother flares her nostrils at her, holding her hands up in surrender. “I can’t talk to you when you’re acting like this.” She turns and walks towards the door, dramatically shaking her head once again. Her jet black bob of hair moves gently with the motion. “We’ll discuss this further later.” 

She shuts the door behind her. Kagami sits motionless for a moment, almost instinctively moving her hands up to her head. 

No. This isn’t anger to be present with. Her face feels too hot. She wants to tear out of her skin and throw things around her room. She pulls her phone from her skirt pocket and sends a text to Himari. She stands from the bed, picks up her bag from the floor, and saunters out of the room and down the marble staircase. 

Both of her parents are sitting at the absurdly large dining table as she descends. They seem to be whispering harshly about something. Probably about her, but she doesn’t care to stay and find out. She reaches the ground floor and wordlessly starts towards the front door before her mother’s voice stops her short. 

“Where do you think you’re going, after speaking to me the way you did?” 

“I’m having Himari take me to the gym.” Kagami adjusts her bag on her shoulder, not turning around. 

Before her mother has the chance to answer, her father speaks up. 

“Why don’t you let her go, Kanade? Staying up in her room won’t do her any good.” 

She hears her mother sigh frustratedly. “Fine. But, Kagami, you’re to be home before eight o’clock.” 

Kagami nods curtly and paces quickly to the front door, slamming it shut behind her. 

+++ 

Kagami has already torn through three training dummies within the first thirty minutes of arriving to the gym. She’s using a cheap sabre from the gym, too, and it’s well on its way to snapping in half. 

She’d told the worker at the front that she’d pay--or, well, her parents would pay--for any damages she caused. He seemed to know who she was because he was too intimidated to tell her she couldn’t come in and break their stuff. 

Himari is standing with her back against the wall, watching with wide eyes as Kagami beats the absolute shit out of the dummies. Kagami hadn’t changed back into her fencing gear before she started. This is the first time she’s ever fenced in her skirt. She has to admit, she feels like an absolute badass, even if she’s pissed off beyond belief. 

As she wildly swings at the dummy in front of her, she’s knowingly breaking several rules of fencing. If she wasn’t _the_ Kagami Tsurugi, anyone watching her might think she’s a beginner. 

The sabre breaks in her hand, the tip sliding across the floor and underneath a treadmill. She takes that as a sign that it’s time for a break. 

"Jesus, Kagami,” Himari finally pipes up from the wall. 

“This is how I’ve always taken out my anger,” Kagami says in reply. “And since we don’t have a private training area in our new mansion, I really didn’t have a choice." 

"You...broke a sabre in half.” 

“My parents,” Kagami starts, leaning over to grab a water bottle from inside her bag, “are making me model for some guy’s fencing line. That’s a little more noteworthy than me breaking a sabre. I’ve broken plenty of sabres in my lifetime.” 

Himari shifts uncomfortably against the wall as Kagami walks over to join her. “I guess my warning wasn’t enough for you, huh?” 

Kagami shakes her head as she downs the bottle of water. “Not by a long shot.” She wipes her mouth, and leans her head back against the cement wall, staring up at a light fixture above them. 

“Why didn’t you tell me everything to begin with?” 

Himari shifts again. Kagami lowers her head again just in time to see a kid in a red-and-white hoodie lose his footing and slide off of a nearby treadmill. The kid in green standing next to him rushes to his side and helps him up. Perhaps Kagami would’ve thought it was funny in a different situation. 

"I still don’t know you very well,” Himari answers carefully. “I didn’t want to cross any more boundaries than was necessary.” 

Kagami shrugs, stretching her arms outward. “Yeah, now that you mention it, it’s probably for the best that you didn’t tell me the whole story. It...accidentally slipped that you told me beforehand, so...” She turns her head towards Himari. “I don’t think you’re in any trouble, though.” 

Himari shakes her head gently. “It’ll be my fault if I am. I’m not worried about it.”  
Kagami hums in agreement. 

After a brief moment of uncomfortable silence, Kagami clears her throat. “Um...thank you for bringing me here, Himari. I really needed this. And, I’m sorry if I freaked you out by destroying a bunch of dummies.” 

Himari chuckles. “That’s okay. I’d rather see you take out your anger on inanimate objects than...well, non-inanimate ones.” 

Himari frowns suddenly, flicking her wrist to turn on the screen of her smartwatch. 

**19:32.**

Kagami wonders why on earth Himari set her watch to military time, but doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m gonna go out to the car,” Himari declares, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I’ll give you a minute to get your stuff together...and pay the guys up front for the, uh, damage.” 

She takes a few steps towards the front and pauses. “Your parents really won’t be angry about this?” 

“What, about me spending their money?” Kagami snorts, shuffling through her fencing bag for her wallet. “They rake in a few million a week from my Olympian siblings, and they’re about to make even more for my new modeling career. I don’t think a few hundred dollars for gym damages will really hurt them that much.” 

Himari stands still for another moment before leaving the fencing area. 

Kagami makes a quick run to the bathroom to rinse the sweat off her face. She cups the water onto her skin, grateful for the icy sensation. She hadn’t realized how overheated her body was until just now, standing in the air-conditioned bathroom with cold tap water dripping down her face. 

As she pats her cheeks dry with a handful of cheap paper towels, she takes a moment to look at herself in the mirror; her deep brown eyes, her thin pink lips, her round face, and nonexistent jawline. 

_“See, mother, I have the face of a Tsurugi. Not a Gabriel Agreste model."_

She lets out a frustrated grunt and exits the bathroom, pays $750 dollars in damages on the debit card her father had given her, and meets Himari outside at the car. 

They ride back to the mansion together in silence. 


	3. Honey

Chloe feels a million pounds lighter, even with her heart beating violently against her ribs. Her nine words hang in the air between her and Sabrina like a weighted balloon.

_Well, to start, I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian._

Sabrina hasn’t blinked in at least thirty seconds. _Say something,_ Chloe pleads internally, her fear of rejection beginning to weigh heavily on her shoulders. She has the urge to get up and run away. She hugs her knees to her chest and stares down at the floor.

“I’m proud of you,” Sabrina begins, “I’m proud of you, and this doesn’t change a thing about our friendship.”

Chloe snaps her head up. “What? Really?”

“Of course not, Chlo,” Sabrina beams. “In fact, it’s...really relieving to hear.

“How so?” Chloe inquires. Her heart rate has calmed, and she feels herself coming down from her fit of anxiety. 

Sabrina is grinning at her, her fingers gently fluttering the way they do when she’s excited. “I knew you were, like, homophobic in the past, but it’s so good to know that it was...out of denial.”

Chloe blinks at her, now more confused than fearful. “I mean, yeah, but...how is it good to know?”

_Are you also a lesbian? How funny would that be?_

Sabrina lets out a subtly shaky breath and folds her hands in her lap. “Because I’ve got something to tell you, too. Something I always kept to myself because I thought you’d drop me for it.”

Hmm. Chloe kept her sexuality to herself for the same reason. _Small world,_ she thinks hazily.

“I’m aroace,” Sabrina states quickly, like she’s afraid of the word. “I have been since...well, as long as I can remember.”

Her brows furrowed curiously, Chloe asks, “What’s...what’s arrow ace?”

Sabrina’s expression morphs from a cautious one to an amused one. She laughs. “Oh, right. I don’t know why I assumed you’d know. It’s, ah,” She changes positions and hugs herself again. It’s something she does when she’s anxious or nervous. She used to do it all the time when she and Chloe were together.

She does it much, much less frequently now.

“It’s when you’re both aromantic and asexual. Which, um...asexuality is when you don’t have sexual attraction, and aromanticism is when you don’t have romantic attraction. I’ve, uh, I’ve never had a crush on someone before, and I always thought there was something wrong with me, but...my therapist was actually the one who told me what aroace, and I did a lot of research, and…”

She lets her words die. Chloe can tell she feels embarrassed, perhaps a bit ashamed.   
Chloe has never heard of either of those words before. She realizes she’s completely unfamiliar with most LGBT+ terms, besides, well; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. She shuffles closer to Sabrina on the couch, carefully putting an arm around her. Sabrina leans into her side. Chloe doesn’t realize how touch starved she is until she gets a feeling of pure bliss from the contact with her best friend. She’s never cuddled with anyone before. Maybe she should try it out more often.

“I’m glad you told me,” Chloe tells Sabrina gently. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I’d get rid of you for that before.”

Sabrina sniffles beside her. “It’s okay. All that really matters to me is how things are now. I’m glad you came out to me, too, Chlo. This means more to me than you know.”

Chloe feels warm at Sabrina’s words. She’s so damn lucky to have her.   
“Same here,” she replies gingerly. 

She loosens her arms from Sabrina’s shoulders but doesn’t quite let go. She wonders how things could’ve ever been so terrible between them, and for Chloe in general. Ever since she stopped bottling everything up and learning to let the bad parts of herself go, she’s been crying a lot more. She’s been _feeling_ a lot more, for better and for worse. She’s been tearing up during sad movies, and laughing aloud at memes Adrien sends her on Instagram, and using her nights alone to stare up at the starry Parisian sky, allowing whatever emotions she needs to feel wash over her. Once she accepted that she liked girls, she found that she was beginning to accept herself, too. The fact that Sabrina also accepts her makes it all feel so much more worth it.  
It’s hard for Chloe to believe that life used to be anything but what it is now.

“The way things used to be kind of feels like a nightmare, now,” is the only part of her thought process that she verbalizes.

Sabrina hums. “The way things are now feels like a dream to me.”

_Yeah, same here._

Chloe’s phone buzzes loudly against the glass of the coffee table in front of them. Chloe lets go of Sabrina and grabs it to see who’s messaging her at one in the morning. It’s Adrien again. Her lock screen displays his text message to her. Chloe feels herself smiling at her phone.

“Hey, Sabrina? What are you doing on Monday?”

Sabrina sits up straight, stretching her legs and yawning. “Homework, probably. Why?”

“Adrien is inviting both of us to his fencing tournament. It starts at six. Do you wanna go?”

Sabrina’s face lights up. Chloe knows she usually doesn’t go out much, with the exception of Chloe’s hotel floor on most weekends. Sabrina is intimidated by the idea of making new friends, and Chloe figures that the tournament might help with that. Especially since she’ll be there with her as a source of comfort.  
“Sure!” Sabrina agrees enthusiastically. “I can just come over after school if you want, and we can walk in together.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Chloe says through a yawn. “We can do our homework together before we leave, too.”

Sabrina nods sleepily. They both seem to realize how tired they are at the same time. Chloe’s eyes suddenly feel like a bag of bricks hanging from her face. 

“Wanna clean up and go to bed?” Sabrina chimes in, reading Chloe’s mind yet again.

“Yeah, I’ll take the dishes down to the kitchen real quick.” Chloe dramatically kicks her legs up and stands from the sofa, gathering the empty bowl of queso blanco and empty donut and chip bags from the coffee table. 

Sabrina shuts off the TV and makes a move to stand up, giving up halfway through and letting herself fall onto her side on the couch. “I’ll be here when you get back,” she mumbles.

Chloe gazes fondly at the sleepy redhead for a moment before heading to the elevator.

Once reaching the restaurant’s kitchen, she rinses the bowl out and crumples the bags into the empty trash can. She thinks about the conversation she just had with Sabrina. 

When Chloe was younger, before her mom left, she’d had her very first doubts about which gender she liked better. Both of her parents had joked to her that she’d marry Adrien one day, back when they and Adrien’s parents were trying to set them up (as kids, nonetheless!). She’d always made a little pouty face at them, insisting that they couldn’t get married because they were best friends. Her dad told her that people sometimes married their best friends because they wound up falling in love. 

“I don’t think that’ll happen with me and Adrien,” Chloe told him with her nose scrunched up.

“Just wait and see, Chloe darling,” her dad replied. 

At that, Chloe wondered if “falling in love” just felt like friendship, since that was all she felt towards Adrien. As years would pass, that’s all she would feel towards Adrien. One day, not long before her mom left, Chloe asked her if girls fell in love with their girl best friends.

“I don’t feel in love with Adrien. If I had a girl best friend, would I feel in love with her?”

Her mom was less than pleased with her question, taking Chloe on her first ever journey through a homophobic person’s rant. 

“It’s unnatural!” Her mother had basically shrieked. “When girls think they love other girls, it’s because they’re sick in the head. My daughter is not sick in the head. Never ask me a question like that again, do you hear me?”

Since then, she’d assumed everyone in her life felt the same way, so she never tried exploring the topic again.

Until Ladybug, of course. 

Chloe sighs heavily, still standing by herself in the cold, moonlit kitchen. She still can’t believe Sabrina didn’t bat an eye upon Chloe’s coming out. The fact that Sabrina isn’t straight either makes her wonder how many other people she knows are the same way. Adrien? One of her classmates? Could any of the adults she knows not be straight, too? She feels like a door to a whole different universe was opened after talking with Sabrina.

She steps back into the elevator, grateful for the heat coming from its vents. She has no idea why the kitchen is so freezing, considering that the rest of the hotel feels just fine to her.  
As the elevator door slides open on her floor, she tries to ease her mind. She doesn’t want to lie awake all night thinking about being gay. Again. For the umpteenth time.

Sabrina is fast asleep on the sofa, right where Chloe left her. In the time Chloe was gone, she’s curled herself around a throw pillow and placed another one on top of her in place of a blanket.  
Gently sitting down beside her, Chloe realizes again how lucky she is to have her. Aside from her caring and intelligent personality, Sabrina is just really fucking adorable.

“‘Brina.” Chloe shakes her leg. Sabrina groans softly.

“C’mon, move to the actual bed. You can use an actual blanket there.”

Sabrina very slowly sits up, looking at Chloe with a zombie-like expression. “Okay…” she slurs.  
Chloe practically has to carry Sabrina to her bed, supporting her shoulders as they walked. After letting Sabrina slump down onto the plush duvet, Chloe switches all of the lights off.

She’ll never get tired of the way her large windows let in the moonlight. It’s a big part of what soothes Chloe to sleep these days. That, and the sound of rain.

She climbs into her bed, where Sabrina has already cocooned herself under the comforter. 

“Hey, Chlo?” She hears Sabrina say raspily.

“Yeah?”

“How long have you known you like girls?”

“I first had suspicions when I was, like, nine years old. But I sort of ignored it up until a few months ago when I realized…” Chloe trails off.

“Realized what?”

Chloe turns over to face Sabrina, who’s facing away from her. “I realized I was in love with Ladybug.”

“Mm,” Sabrina replies. “That makes sense, actually. I always noticed that you got nervous around her, but I figured it was just because she’s, y’know, Ladybug.”  
“She’s wonderful,” Chloe hums dreamily. She realizes that talking about crushes is something she and Sabrina have never done before, despite knowing each other for...well, forever, almost. Since Chloe was placed in public school, after her mother left for New York.

“The concept of romantic feelings is so weird to me,” Sabrina states, turning to face Chloe. Her eyes are glowing emerald in the moonlight. “Like, I’ve only had to try forcing it once before I realized it wasn’t something for me.”

This piques Chloe’s interest. “Really? When did you try forcing it?”

“Third grade. Juleka Couffaine said she had a crush on me, and I had just learned what a crush was, so I was kinda like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And, y’know, that whole thing didn’t last a whole day, and I never had a crush after that, and I’m content with that.”

“Juleka Couffaine, huh? I didn’t know she was gay, too,” Chloe says, wondering again how many gay people she already knew. Apparently, there are quite a few.

“What?” Sabrina exclaims. “You seriously didn’t know she was gay?”

Chloe holds one hand up in surrender. “How would I have known that?”

“She and Rose have been dating since last school year, Chlo!” 

Sabrina starts laughing hysterically, and after a moment of confusion, Chloe joins in.

“Well, that would explain the hand holding, and the hugging, and the...oh my God, they totally have,” Chloe realizes, still laughing. “I guess I’m just not good at picking up on stuff yet.”

Sabrina takes a deep breath, trying to stop herself giggling. “That’s so funny, holy shit.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Chloe teases. “But, actually, though. It’s almost two now.”

“Okay, okay,” Sabrina turns back over. “Thank you for that, I really needed that laugh.”  
“Anytime. Goodnight, ‘Brina.”

“Goodnight.”

Chloe would’ve said, “love you,” but she’s not sure where Sabrina stands with that phrase yet. Plus, Chloe really isn’t used to saying it, so she worries it’ll sound weird if she says it. Like trying to say something in a foreign language.

Chloe hears Sabrina’s breathing get deeper and slower within just two minutes. _Jesus, how does she fall asleep so fast?_

Chloe turns around to face her nightstand. She pulls her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants and plugs it in, placing it on the floor by the bed. 

She realizes that she and Sabrina never finished their dual therapy session after it was interrupted by a coming-out session. 

Oh, well. They’ll probably finish it at some point. Plus, they both really needed to have the coming-out session. Chloe feels so much better. A little freer. 

Her last thought before gradually drifting off is that she hopes Sabrina feels better, too. God knows she deserves it.

 

+++

 

“My queen?”

“Mmf.”

Chloe feels something warm poking at her face, dragging her out of a dead sleep. She feels dried drool on the side of her cheek. 

“My queen, there’s an akuma,” a tiny voice says. “You need to get up and transform.”  
Chloe groans loudly. She doesn’t worry about waking Sabrina up, knowing that Sabrina sleeps like a rock. She doesn’t worry about her seeing Pollen, either, for the same reason.

She opens her eyes to see Pollen, her kwami, floating inches from her face. It used to scare the hell out of Chloe when she did that, but after a few night akumas, she got used to it. Ever since acquiring the Bee Miraculous, Chloe hasn’t even had to set school alarms, because Pollen seemed to take their place in terms of annoying wake-up sounds.

“There hasn’t been a night akuma in so long…” Chloe whines groggily as she sits up, stretching her limbs out. Her shoulder pops with the motion. 

She runs her hands through her hair, checking that the comb is still in place. The thing used to drive her nuts, but after six months of wearing it 24/7, she sort of stopped noticing it was there. She’s gone to school without it in before; more than once, it fell out while she slept, which meant Pollen wasn’t there to tell her that it did, indeed, fall out. Incidentally, she was late to school when that happened, since Pollen wasn’t there to wake her up, either.

“We must hurry, Ladybug and Chat Noir are waiting for you close to Place De Vosges Square,” Pollen urges as Chloe pushes herself out of bed and slips on her house shoes. “Ladybug’s kwami contacted me and said it’s an intangible akuma, so they’ll need you to freeze it before they can make any moves.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Chloe smirks at the yellow-and-black kwami, suddenly filled with energy after the mention of Ladybug’s name. _“Pollen, transforme-moi!”_

She transforms into Queen Bee in a flash of bright yellow and sprints out her balcony door, leaping out onto the nearest building. She can see her breath when she exhales, but doesn’t feel cold at all. Even the frigid November air can’t penetrate whatever type of magic surrounds her suit.

Chloe still isn’t used to how exhilarating it is to feel lighter than air, able to jump about as high as she wants to. It’s like living with low gravity. She loves it. She hops from rooftop to rooftop until she spots the red and black figures, kneeling and peeking over the railing of a widow’s walk. She lands beside them quietly, rolling forward upon impact with the ground and joining Ladybug’s left side. 

“Hey, Bee,” Ladybug greets her, not taking her eyes off of the street below.

“Take a look at that,” Chat says to her. Chloe peers over the rail to see a figure that appears to be made out of outer space itself, complete with little comets flying around within the akuma victim’s body. Hands down the prettiest akuma Chloe has seen so far. Not that it matters.

“We have a plan, and if it all works, this shouldn’t take too long,” Ladybug declares quietly, shifting her gaze between Chloe and Chat Noir. “I know we all want to go back to sleep as soon as possible.”

“Papillon is a whole moron for waking me up,” Chat Noir grumbles. “I had just finished my physics homework, and I hadn’t been lying down for five minutes when--”

“Focus, Kitty,” Ladybug scolds him gently. “Okay, so, what we’re gonna do is distract them, and lure them towards the fountain over there,” Ladybug pauses to point to her left. “where Queen Bee will be hiding inside. I need you to have your Venom ready, okay?”

Chloe nods dutifully. It never fails to charm her when Ladybug is giving orders. 

“Chat, I’ll have you hiding on the opposite side of the fountain, Cataclysm in hand. I’ll be the one to distract them and try to have them trip into the fountain. Sound like a plan?”

“Sure thing, m’lady,” Chat Noir answers, giving her a little salute before swinging himself over the other side of the rail.

Ladybug glances at Chloe and gives her a little nod. “We’re gonna do this, Chloe,” she says confidently before leaping over the railing in front of them. She must’ve been too tired to notice her slip-up with Chloe’s civilian name, and Chloe’s heart is now hammering in her chest as she follows where Chat Noir went to the fountain.  
 _Dammit, Bourgeois, there’s an akumatized person and all you can think about is Ladybug. Focus._

“Hey, Astronomer! Over here!” she hears Ladybug call from a few streets over. Chloe swiftly hops into the empty fountain and crouches down, pulling her spinning top from its holster on her hip.

“Venom,” she whispers. The top begins to glow, pulsating slightly at the top. She’s careful not to touch it to the side of the fountain.

“Cataclysm,” she hears Chat Noir whisper from the other side of the fountain. Chloe feels a rush of adrenaline. 

“You can’t escape the Astronomer’s black holes for long, Ladybug!” a masculine voice echoes off of the surrounding buildings. Chloe looks over the fountain’s edge to see Ladybug running towards her at top speed, dodging whatever it was that Astronomer was shooting at her. Black holes, probably. _Papillon’s powers are so...wild._

Ladybug leaps clean over the fountain and shrieks, “Now, Queen Bee!”

Chloe shoots upwards when she sees Astronomer, jabbing them in the leg with her top. They fall next to her, motionless and silent. 

Chat Noir rounds the fountain and places his right palm over the akumatized object; a Saturn necklace around the victim’s neck. It crumbles, and the akuma’s power leaves the person’s body in a wave of dark purple. Ladybug tosses her yo-yo in the air to perform the Cure. When she doesn’t have a Lucky Charm object to perform it with, she’s found that she can just use her yo-yo. With Chloe and the other two new heroes, she’s had to use it far less frequently.

The victim sits up, dazedly placing a hand on their forehead. “Oh, jeez…”

“Everything is okay,” Ladybug walks over to the fountain, placing a hand on the person’s shoulder. “You were akumatized, but that’s all taken care of now. Do you want one of us to walk you home?”

The person shook their head. “I appreciate it, but I actually need to run by my buddy’s house to apologize. He was calling me an astrophysicist wannabe, and I guess I took it too personally.” He looks up at the three heroes above him, smiling gratefully. “Thank you all for saving me. Have a good night.”

“Stay safe, okay?” Chat Noir winks. The person nods, and gets up, heading out of the park and down the street. “Oh, fuck, it’s cold,” they curse once they’re at a distance, wrapping their arms around themselves.

As soon as they’re out of sight, Ladybug turns towards Chloe and Chat Noir, holding up a fist and grinning. Chat Noir and Chloe place their fists against hers.

 _“Bien joue!”_ They cheer in unison. 

Chat’s ring beeps three times, and the third paw pad disappears from his ring. 

“I’d love to stay and _Chat,_ but this cat’s gotta go get some beauty rest.” He kisses both Ladybug and Chloe on the hand and uses his rod to launch himself over a nearby building.

Ladybug chuckles softly. “That cat and his puns.” She looks at Chloe, her big blue eyes weakening Chloe’s knees. “I’d better be heading home, too, Bee. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Chloe loves when Ladybug calls her Bee. “Same here. I’ll see you later, Bug.”

The nickname catches Ladybug by surprise, but she smiles wide after a moment. She gives Chloe a little wave, and then soars off after latching her yo-yo onto something in the distance.  
Chloe stares at the sky for a moment longer before heading home herself, her Miraculous beeping at her in warning.  
She hurries back up to her balcony, detransforming as soon as her feet touch its concrete floor. Pollen reappears in a little yellow swirl, immediately perching herself on Chloe’s shoulder.

“That sure was a quick battle,” the kwami remarks. “But I’m somehow still exhausted from it. Might I have some honey, my queen?”

“You don’t need to ask, silly,” Chloe pats Pollen’s head, standing to go inside. She quietly slides the glass door shut behind her and tiptoes over to her nightstand, inching the bottom drawer open. Pollen flies from her shoulder into the drawer, reemerging seconds later with a tiny vial of honey. She pulls the lid off of it and quickly drinks it, humming happily.

Placing the empty vial back into the drawer, she thanks Chloe with a bow before retreating to her hiding place under Chloe’s bed.

Chloe shakes her head fondly. It was difficult to get used to having Pollen around all the time, but after so many months, Chloe’s not sure she could live without her presence. Pollen was a crucial part of Chloe’s discovery of her feelings for Ladybug, among other important emotional awakenings. Chloe loves Pollen to death. 

She just hopes Pollen knows that.

She slowly crawls back into bed, her back to Sabrina. The adrenaline from the akuma battle (and from seeing Ladybug) is starting to wear off, and though her mind is racing, Chloe begins to drift off fairly quickly.

She’s slightly pulled out of her half-sleep when she feels something brushing against her back. She turns her head just enough to see a certain redhead lying right up against Chloe, her face planted into Chloe’s neck. Sabrina wraps her arms around Chloe’s middle and squeezes a little.   
“I figured you gottup to use the bathroom,” Sabrina mumbles, slurring her speech a little.“And I know isscold in your room at night, so I wan’ed to warm you up.”

Chloe feels herself relax into Sabrina’s embrace. “Thanks, ‘Brina,” she replies. She takes a deep, contented breath, her eyes fluttering shut.  
She’s never been held from behind before, but now she never wants not to be held from behind ever again. 

In the morning, the girls wake up in that exact position, instant smiles on their faces.


	4. Nouvelle

**Kagami**

 

Kagami has never been in a public school in her life. Ever since she was old enough to read and write, it was nothing but private tutors for every subject, with sessions in the old mansion’s private schoolroom. When she heard the news that the Tsurugis were moving to Paris, she’d assumed nothing would change; she had no reason to believe otherwise, after all. And she would’ve been right, had it not been for her stupid parents’ stupid decision to make her do stupid modeling.

She sits in the very back of her first-period classroom, a sheet of paper and a pen placed neatly in front of her. The room is completely empty, save for her and the teacher, Mme. Bustier, who seems nice enough.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit closer to the front, Kagami?” she asks kindly, looking up from grading papers. “We can rearrange the seating chart if you’d like.”

“No, thank you,” Kagami politely declines. Mme. Bustier nods at her, letting her eyes fall back down to her desk. 

Kagami watches her dragging her corrective red pen across a paper, shaking her head with each stroke. Kagami’s guess is that whoever had done that assignment hadn’t done a very good job. Kagami jumps when two students shuffle into the room, their hands clasped. She snaps her gaze down at the blank sheet of paper on her desk, giving them a few subtle glances here and there.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit in here with me for a few minutes?” one of them, a redhead, asks the other. “You could still work on your story for the competition.”

The other student, black-haired and green-eyed, shakes his head. “We both know I’d end up watching you draw the entire time, Nath. I’ve gotta get my story finished by the end of the week.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” The redhead, “Nath,” walks up the steps to the desk just below Kagami’s and slings his book bag into his seat. “I probably need to focus on my art final, anyway.”  
He makes his way back down the steps and wraps his arms around his partner in a quick hug. 

“I’ll see you in art class, okay, Marc?”

“Marc” returns Nath’s embrace. “Yeah. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Nath replies, letting go of Marc. After a prolonged moment, the two walk their separate ways, Nath making his way up to his desk. Kagami’s heart pounds as he approaches, and she prays he doesn’t say anything to her. 

Prayers answered he doesn’t. He just sits down and pulls out a worn sketchbook, flipping it open to a dog-eared page. Kagami leans forward as discreetly as she can to get a peek at what’s inside.

As politely as she was raised, Kagami is as nosy as they come.

Nath moves his hand out of the way to reveal a cartoon-style drawing of...himself? Only his hair is purple at the tips, and he’s wearing a skin-tight suit that tapers down from black and white stripes to a dark purple on the legs, to a bright red on his feet. He’s got three colored dots on the center of his chest; blue, red, and yellow.

And, lastly, a butterfly-shaped mask covers his blue eyes. _Why does everyone in Paris have blue or green eyes?_

Kagami recognizes the design from somewhere, but she can’t place it. She silently watches him color in the few white spots left on the drawing. Nath shifts to get something from his bag and Kagami jolts backward, ramming her knee into the bottom of her desk. She winces but says nothing. Mme. Bustier pauses from grading papers again to ask Kagami if she’s okay. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she answers, embarrassed. 

At least Nath still hasn’t said anything. Also, what a strange name. “Nath.”

“Hey, Nathaniel!”

Kagami’s anxiety fires up again as three more students file into the room, all girls. They trudge up the steps and all stop once they reach Nath’s desk.

Wait. Nath _aniel._ That makes so much more sense.

They all stop once they reach Nathaniel’s desk.

“Hey, guys,” he greets them, setting down his fancy art marker. 

The tallest of the three girls opens her mouth to speak when the shortest beat her to it, speaking in a very, very excited voice.

“We wanna commision you to draw something for Juleka’s birthday!” she shrieks, her eyes shining. “It was all Marinette’s idea!”

The girl with jet black pigtails smiles, bashfully scratching the back of her head. “I just thought Juleka should have something memorable…”

Kagami can’t see Nathaniel’s face from where she’s sitting, but she guesses he’s got an excited expression, judging by his body language. He perks up at the girls’ request.

“Well, I need to finish this for my art final,” he points down at his sketchbook. “But I just have to shade it now, which should only take me the rest of today.”

“That’s fine!” the shortest one, who sports a blonde pixie cut, blabs loudly. She’s cute, but she’s got a voice like a dog whistle. “You can start whenever. I’ll text you my idea for it later today!”

She pulls her phone out and starts intently scrolling through something.

The tallest girl, with auburn hair and hazel eyes, chimes in. “Rose mentioned earlier she wants something that would work as a future, um...matching tattoo idea? For her and Juleka.”

When Nathaniel tilts his head at her and doesn’t respond, the hazel-eyed girl adds, “She told me to remember that in case she forgot. Which, we all know she’s the most forgetful person in this school.” She gently elbows the girl with pigtails, Marinette, in the ribs. “Aside from Marinette, of course.”

“Alya,” Marinette whines playfully in reply.

“It’s true,” The pixie cut girl, Rose, declares, looking up from her phone. “At the very mention of Adrien’s name, Marinette’s brain turns to complete mush! It’s so romantic!”

Alya and Nathaniel chuckle at Rose’s words. Marinette blushes and frantically shushes them.  
“You guys, what if he walked in and heard that?” she scolds. 

Kagami involuntarily tenses up.

_Adrien. Of course, he goes here. Of course he does._

Kagami doesn’t have a valid reason to be angry with Adrien. If anything, she knows she should be angry with his father--which, she is. But, right now, anything bearing the Agreste name is enough to make Kagami want to tear up more training dummies. It would make sense for the Marinette girl to like him, though, considering that he’s...a boy. And he’s blond and has pretty eyes. Or something like that. Kagami doesn’t really understand the concept of having a crush on someone, having never had one herself. 

She lets herself zone out as her four classmates continue discussing the birthday commision. In her mind, she’s standing in a fencing arena. She’s holding her red saber, clad in her signature scarlet fencing gear, conquering every opponent that comes her way. She feels the air split in half with each swing of her saber. She doesn’t even know what the word ‘modeling’ means. 

Everything is as it should be. 

“Oh, God, I didn’t even introduce myself.” Kagami hears Marinette say quietly. _Please don’t be talking about me please don’t be talking about me please don’t be talking about m--_

“Um, hello,” Marinette cautiously takes one step up to Kagami’s seat, Alya following closely behind her. Kagami doesn’t see Rose, and figures that she left while she was spaced out.

“Hi,” Kagami says, feeling the word caught in her throat. 

“I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the junior class representative,” Marinette announces cheerfully. _Bold of her to assume I know what any of those words mean._

“And I’m Alya Cesaire, vice rep,” Alya winks at Kagami. “We wanted to introduce ourselves and see if you had any questions about our school so far.”

“Y-yeah, and if there’s anything we can do to make your first day better, don’t hesitate to let us know, okay?” Marinette stutters, still managing to maintain her cheerful vibe.

“I’m Kagami, um, Kagami Tsuguri...I mean, Tsurugi,” Kagami finds herself stuttering as well. The side effects of never interacting with people her own age are starting to kick in even worse now that she’s in a high school

Odd, though, that she didn’t stutter at all while talking to Adrien on Friday. Must’ve been because she’d already seen him before. Or, maybe, because they had fencing in common.

“No way,” Marinette breathes, clutching her tablet closer to her chest. _“The_ Kagami Tsurugi? Wow…”

Kagami fights the urge not to roll her eyes. Not at Marinette, just...in general. She’s so tired of hearing people refer to her as _“the_ Kagami Tsurugi.” She nods politely despite herself. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Well, we’ll leave you alone now so you don’t get overwhelmed,” Alya tells her, grabbing Marinette’s arm and tugging her down the steps. “It was nice to meet you!”

Marinette’s mouth still hangs open in awe as Alya drags her to their desks, two rows below Kagami’s. Kagami feels strangely flattered at this.

No sooner than Alya and Marinette sit down, the bell rings, and more of Kagami’s new classmates file into the room, chatting quietly to one another. She immediately recognizes a boy in a red hoodie as the one who fell off of a treadmill Friday evening. He’s got quite the bruise on his cheek from it. A boy wearing green shuffles in behind him; the other witness to Red Hoodie’s nasty fall. 

Rose comes in holding hands with a taller girl wearing all black. Her hair is long and black, dyed purple at the very ends. That must be Juleka.

Kagami notices that all of the girls walking in are far more intriguing to look at than the boys are; the boys all seem to look the same to her. Or, at least, less vibrant, less noticeable…There’s a girl with dark pink hair, wearing black clothes with flecks of neon green; a girl with her thick, curly hair pulled back into a headband and little pins on her cardigan; a girl with short orange hair wearing an argyle sweater and black tights under teal shorts; and, lastly, a girl with golden hair, sunglasses perched in front of her ponytail, a yellow cardigan, and stripes on her white shirt.

Wait a second. 

Kagami squints at the blonde girl. who sits down beside the orange-haired one in the front row, across the middle aisle. 

It _can’t_ be. There’s no way they’d let _that_ brat into a public school. 

Chloe Bourgeois was the one person Kagami could avoid having to rub elbows with. She’d assumed someone like her would get a private education like Kagami used to. Her gaze moves to the front row on her side of the room, where Adrien is sitting. She’d assumed _he_ would be getting a private education, too. That’s twice she’s been proven wrong.

Kagami knows fully well who Chloe is. Before coming to Paris, she did some research on Ladybug and Chat Noir, the villains that frequented the city, and Papillon himself. Upon discovering the Ladyblog (which she now realizes was run by the Alya Cesaire she just met), she ran through each documented akumatization since the very first one, a little over a year ago. Kagami’s discovery was that, out of all of them, Chloe herself had been the root cause of over sixty percent of them. From there, she researched Chloe outside of akumatizations and came to the conclusion that she was, to put it simply, a bitch.

And that bitch was sitting in Kagami’s classroom. 

She feels her blood boiling. It doesn’t help that Chloe is the prettiest girl in the room. Kagami mentally slaps herself for thinking that.

“Good morning,” Mme. Bustier greets everyone. 

“Good morning, Mademoiselle Bustier!” the class says in cheerful unison. Kagami doesn’t say anything, using the fact that she’s new as an excuse to stay silent. 

“I’m excited to announce that we have a new student,” Mme. Bustier gestures up to Kagami’s seat. Kagami feels a mixture of anxiety and irritation forming in her gut. She bunches the ends of her skirt into her fists. 

“Would you like to introduce yourself to the class, Kagami?”

Kagami knows she means well, but that is the very last thing she wants to do, ever. Nonetheless, she feels herself standing in her seat. She clears her throat, sick of introducing herself to people.

“My name is Kagami Tsurugi, and I moved here about two weeks ago from Kyoto. I come from a long line of professional fencers, and my family moved here so I could attend the D’Argencourt Fencing academy.” Kagami speaks slowly but doesn’t take any breaks between sentences, hoping to reduce the risk of anyone asking her questions. She bows delicately after she’s finished speaking.

Everyone is staring at her with wide, starry eyes. It would appear that they all already know who she is. She sinks back into her seat, frustratedly willing herself invisible. Kagami isn’t exactly a socially anxious person, she’s just never not had unwanted attention from people. She prefers not to be seen most of the time unless she’s in the midst of a fencing tournament. 

That’s when she knows all eyes are on her. That’s when she _wants_ all eyes on her.

But not here, in this classroom.

Before any of her classmates have the chance to react, Mme. Bustier speaks up again.  
“It’s an honor to have you in our class, Kagami,” she says brightly. Moving her gaze around the room, she adds, “I know all of you will make her feel welcome. Now, I’ll just have you pick up where you left off on your independent reading, so go ahead and pull out your books!”

Everyone pulls out a copy of _The Great Gatsby,_ a book that Kagami has heard of but knows absolutely nothing about. 

“And let me go get a copy for Kagami from the library,” Mme. Bustier mutters dutifully to herself before fast-walking out of the classroom. From what Kagami has seen in movies about western public schools, she expects everyone to burst into chatter the second the teacher leaves the room. Pleasantly to her surprise, they remain silent, save for the sounds of pages turning.   
Red Hoodie sneezes loudly, and a few students echo a “bless you” around. Kagami sits patiently with her hands folded in her lap. 

She hopes vainly that the rest of her day goes by this quietly.

 

+++

 

**Chloe**

 

Chloe has been turning around to sneak glances at the new girl for thirty minutes now. It’s difficult to even see her with Nathaniel and Ivan sitting in the row below her, but Chloe catches a glimpse of her every now and then, and each time the same two words bounce off the walls in her mind.

_That’s Ladybug._

Chloe knows she’s being crazy, but the resemblance is uncanny. For a while, she’d suspected that Marinette was Ladybug, because of the pigtails, but dismissed that theory on account of how nervous Marinette is all the time. Kagami, though; everything about her screams self-assured and confident. Sure, her hair is different, but Chloe’s hair is different when _she’s_ transformed, so who says Ladybug’s isn’t the same way?

She turns back to the front of the room and tries to focus on the book in front of her, but all of the words keep turning into mental TV static. A few times, Chloe swears she read the word Ladybug in the pages, but it disappears when she does a double take. She leans back in her seat and runs a hand through her ponytail. She really is a “gay disaster,” as Sabrina has been calling her since their mutual coming-out on Friday night. 

Chloe pretends to read until the bell rings again and class is dismissed. Despite the anxious energy coursing through her, she puts away her things slowly and walks out of the room at a normal pace when all she wants to do is run. She and Sabrina part ways just outside of the doorway. Chloe waits at the staircase for Alya and Adrien, who have study hall with her in the library next period. Alya used to hate Chloe, but after Chloe’s “redemption arc,” as Alya puts it, they’ve actually bonded a lot, mainly over their shared obsession with Ladybug. 

Chloe perks up as she spots the two walking towards her, engaged in conversation about something. 

“...my guess is that they both bought them from the same place I did,” Alya’s telling Adrien as they move within earshot. She continues speaking as the three make their way to the other side of the building.   
“There’s this artist on Etsy who sells _super_ well-detailed Miraculous replicas, charged and uncharged. The uncharged ones are sort of just a guess since no one knows what they _actually_ look like when they’re not being used. All five of them are in their shop. I got the fox one because it matches my outfit the best.”

“Nino does really like Carapace,” Adrien says thoughtfully. He glances up at Chloe’s hair. “Is that where you got yours, Chlo?”

Chloe’s hand moves up to her head, touching the cool surface of her comb. “Yeah, um, Queen Bee’s outfit is really close to mine, so, y’know…”

“I’m just surprised she didn’t get Ladybug’s earrings,” Alya remarks with a smirk as they enter the school library. 

“Wh-what?” Chloe stammers as she slings her bag onto the floor, sitting down at one of the tables. “Why’s that?”

“Because she’s the only superhero you ever talk about?” Alya answers, placing her bag on the table in front of her as she sits. “She’s your favorite, isn’t she?”

Chloe feels relief wash over her. Ever since telling Sabrina about her feelings for Ladybug, she’s felt like everyone else suddenly found out, too. She feels like she’s wearing an “I ♥️ Ladybug” T-shirt at all times now.

Adrien is the last to sit down, gently placing his trig textbook in front of him. “She’s my favorite, too,” Adrien adds before Chloe can answer. “Other than Chat Noir, of course. He’s the coolest.”

“I dunno, Rena Rouge is kinda hot,” Alya shrugs, pulling a thick notebook out of her backpack before slumping it down onto the floor.

Before Adrien and Alya have the chance to argue for the millionth time about which hero they think is the hottest, the library door opens loudly behind them. They all turn towards it out of habit.  
Chloe’s face drains of color.

“Oh, hey, it’s Kagami,” Adrien notices quietly. “She’s new to my fencing academy.”

“I already met her earlier this morning,” Alya replies. “You think she’s got study hall with us?”

Chloe feels her heart beating faster with each step Kagami takes towards their table. She silently takes a seat in the one remaining chair, opposite Chloe, and rests her folded arms on the table.

“Hey, Kagami!” Adrien says warmly. “It’s cool that you’re going to school here now.”

“Nice to see you again,” Alya adds with a smile. 

Chloe wants to greet her, too, but can’t seem to remember how to speak. Her brain is running wild with the idea that the love of her life is very possibly sitting across the table from her.

“It’s nice to see you guys again, too,” Kagami returns politely. “I have study hall with you this period. But, um, I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“Well,” Chloe hears herself talking and hopes that she doesn’t say something stupid, “you generally just do homework from another class, or study for a test, or anything you want, really.” She fights a huge grin from overtaking her entire face. “Um, I usually just watch YouTube after I finish doing what I need to.”

Kagami just glares daggers at Chloe in reply. She doesn’t say anything. Chloe feels her heart drop. No one has given her that look in a while.

Neither Adrien nor Alya seems to notice.

“Yeah, you can just kinda chill if you want,” Alya affirms, opening her notebook to a blank page. Chloe recognizes it immediately as Alya’s Ladybug Notebook, within which she’s been trying to deduce Ladybug’s identity ever since the very beginning.   
Adrien is already working on his trig homework. 

“I’ll probably just read the book from first period,” Kagami states, pulling out _The Great Gatsby_ from her bag.

Chloe pulls out her copy, too, and flips it open to where she left off. She knows she won’t be able to focus on it at all, but she wants to at least look like she’s doing something.

Her mind wanders across the pages again. Why did Kagami look at her like that? Did someone tell her something from the past? Chloe begins to have second thoughts about Kagami being Ladybug when she feels her phone vibrate in her lap. She looks down at it. _New message from Alya._

**Alya: Am I crazy, or does Kagami totally look like Ladybug?**

Chloe picks the phone up from her lap and types a quick reply, secretly glad she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Even so, the Ladybug she knew wouldn’t have given her such a nasty look.

**Chloe: No, I thought the same thing.**

Alya replies within seconds.

**Alya: But didn’t she just move here from Japan?**

In her Ladybug-intoxicated state, Chloe hadn’t thought about that. There’s no way Kagami could be Ladybug, then. She feels a strange mixture of relief and disappointment at this.

**Chloe: Yeah, you’re right. We’ll talk about this more at lunch.**

With that, Chloe places her phone face-down on the table and pretends to read her book until the third-period bell rings.


	5. Swing

**Kagami**

 

“Dammit.”

Adrien holds his losing pose for a moment before straightening up. Lifting his helmet, he bows forward. Kagami returns the gesture.

“You’re doing great, Kagami,” Adrien reassures her, walking over to his bag to grab a bottle of water. 

Kagami frowns at him, taking off her helmet and letting it fall onto the floor. She’s still angry, so angry, and while she knows it’s the adults she’s mad at, she can’t help but feel it when she looks at Adrien. When she’s sure he’s not looking at her, she crouches and places her hands on either side of her head. _Calm down, it’s okay._ Adrien turns back around and Kagami shoots up, thrusting her hands behind her back. 

“Thanks, Agreste,” she offers, hoping she doesn’t sound as pissed as she feels. “You’re getting better yourself.”

Adrien crosses his legs beneath him and sinks down to the floor. “Thank you,” he sighs at her, eyes closed.

He stretches his arms out behind him, shifting his weight onto them. His blond bangs are slicked against his forehead from sweat. Pressing a hand up to her forehead, Kagami realizes hers are, too. She joins Adrien, sitting on her knees and wiping her forehead. She pulls out her water bottle from her bag, downing a good half of it in one breath. God, this venue really doesn’t slack with their heating. It’s nice considering that it’s in the negatives outside, but less nice for the fencers, who are going to be competing in full-body gear for three hours.

Kagami takes in a deep breath, willing her body temperature to lower.

She and Adrien were the first ones to arrive, so they’d decided to warm up together on the venue’s arena. Technically, they were supposed to warm up in a designated area somewhere else in the building, but no one had told them where to find it, and no one’s yelled at them to stop yet, so. It feels nice to have the entire arena to themselves. All of the seats are empty, save for a few custodians sweeping through the aisles and rows. It’s like Kagami is performing just for herself, and she loves it. She also loves how quiet it is. All she can hear is the clashing of her and Adrien’s sabers and the sound of rain pattering on the venue’s roof. She closes her eyes, losing herself in the serenity for a brief moment.

“Hey, Kagami…”

Kagami doesn’t open her eyes. “Mm?”

“My father told me that he met your mother.”

Now, Kagami’s eyes snap open. She keeps her gaze fixed on the venue’s ceiling. “Adrien, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, I know,” she hears him say, a hint of desperation in his voice. “I know. I just…I know how it is to have decisions made for you. I know you don’t want to do the modeling thing. I don’t either, really.”

Kagami grunts and lets herself slowly fall backward until her back touches the floor.

_“Tsurugi Kagami, do you know how many germs are on that floor?”_ her mother scolds in her head.

“That’s why I wanted to give you some tips,” Adrien continues. Kagami sees him shift through her peripheral vision. “On how to cope with it.”

Kagami turns her head to the side until she’s looking at him, a mixture of surprise and relief clouding her brain. “What?”

“If you’re okay with that, of course.”

“What?” Kagami repeats, sitting up and curling around to pop her back. “Of course I’m okay with it, I...would actually really appreciate it.”

“Okay.” Adrien stands up and puts his helmet back on. He picks up his saber and twirls it around in his hand. 

“But only if I can manage to beat you,” he chides with a grin. “And no cheating, you can’t let me win.”

Adrien extends a hand down to her, an offer to help her up.

Kagami stares up at him for a moment, completely dumbfounded. Is this what it’s like to joke around with a friend? Or to just... _have_ a friend. She takes his hand and he helps her get on her feet. 

Either way, Kagami thinks she likes it. 

“All right, Agreste,” Kagami puts on her helmet and picks up her saber, pointing it at him. “Let’s see if you can’t hit me once before the tournament starts, hmm?”

 

+++

 

**Chloe**

 

Chloe hasn’t been at the stadium for longer than five minutes and she’s already tying her gut into knots over watching Kagami fence. She’s restlessly bouncing her leg and wiping her palms on her jeans every five seconds, sitting in between Marinette and Sabrina. They’d scored the very best seats in the house; close enough to see the action in full view, yet far away enough to see both fencers at once without one blocking the other from view. 

“Hey, Chlo, I’m gonna go get some snacks from the concession stand back there,” Sabrina leans to tell Chloe. “Want anything?”

Chloe shakes her head. She feels like her nervous energy is inhabiting her entire stomach right now. “No thanks, I’m still full from the pizza today.”

Sabrina nods and stands, pushing her way through the sea of people in the aisles until she’s out of sight. 

Chloe turns back towards the arena, which is empty for the time being. To her right, Marinette is talking excitedly to Alya about something. Chloe doesn’t see Nino on Alya’s other side, and wonders where he is.

“...and the reason Luka didn’t come tonight was that he had too much homework.” Chloe has noticed multiple times that Marinette talks with her hands. It’s something Chloe has grown fond of.

“And, um, speaking of Luka,” Marinette scoots back and faces forward, silently including Chloe into the conversation. Chloe winces. Marinette also seems to have super-senses for when someone is eavesdropping on her.

“Sorry, guys,” Chloe says gingerly. “Go ahead, Mari.”

Marinette didn’t start letting Chloe call her “Mari” until after she got the Bee Miraculous. After six months of using the nickname, calling Marinette by her full name would feel like committing some sort of crime. _Everyone_ calls her Mari.

“Oh, no, it’s okay!” Marinette assures her, talking with her hands. “But, um, yeah...speaking of Luka. I think he and I are official now?”

From Marinette’s right, Alya raises an eyebrow. “Okay, details, girl.”

“Wait, isn’t Luka Juleka’s older brother?” Chloe interjects, genuinely unsure. She was also trying to take her mind off of Kagami. _Think about anything but Kagami._

Marinette nods. “I met him at the music festival last year. We’ve been in the talking stage for...well, since last year. _But,”_ Marinette moves her gaze between Chloe and Alya dramatically.

_“But what!?”_ Alya bursts, grabbing one of Marinette’s shoulders. 

“I went to his house...boat...again today after school. I went to help him with an art project, and after we finished it, we finally talked about things,” Marinette pauses again for dramatic effect, and Alya nearly explodes.

_“Girl, what!?”_

“Okay, okay! Long story short, he told me how he felt, and I managed to tell him I felt the same way, and...yeah.”

Alya’s mouth opens to reply and Marinette holds her hand over it. “Hold on, I’m not done yet.”

Alya groans. Chloe chuckles.

“Before making it official, he told me he had a confession to make to me, and naturally I start to freak out. Like, ‘what if he’s about to tell me he’s a drug dealer?’ Y’know? But he tells me that he’s got a little thing for Adrien, too.”

_Other non-straight people I know: Sabrina, Juleka, Rose, Luka,_ Chloe mentally begins a list.

Alya gasps and Marinette holds up a finger. “Which, I also have a thing for Adrien. So, we agreed that we’d confess to him together, just to get it off of our chests, I guess. You can speak now, Alya.”

Chloe frowns. If Luka has a crush on Adrien, he’s gonna have his heart broken, because Adrien is straight. At least, as far as Chloe knows. 

_Is_ he straight? And how can Luka and Marinette like Adrien if they already like each other? Chloe shakes her head, puzzled. There’s so much about other people that she still doesn’t understand.

 

“Holy _shit!”_ Alya shriek-whispers, shattering Chloe’s thought process. “Mari! I _so_ called Lukanette. Ever since the day we met Luka I called it.”

“What about Adrinette?” Marinette fake-pouts. “Did you give up on us?”

“Nope,” Alya shakes her head, pulling her scarf off and shoving it into Marinette’s purse. “Now we’ve got mission Luk-adri-nette.”

Chloe listens to the Marinette gush about Luka and Adrien, while Alya chimes in every now and then to say something about Nino, and they just...talk. They talk like no one is around. Chloe wishes she could say something about Ladybug. Or Kagami, to try and make sense of her feelings. 

Well, considering Luka’s crush on Adrien, Marinette and Alya are clearly accepting…

Chloe really just wants to talk to someone about it. She didn’t have the chance to say anything to Sabrina after school because she was doing her homework with tunnel vision. She feels trapped, listening to the girls beside her talk about their crushes. 

Chloe feels movement to her left and she turns to see Sabrina holding two bags of popcorn. 

“I know you said you didn’t want anything, but, c’mon,” Sabrina teases as she sits down. “I sampled some on the way back here, and it’s really good.”

Chloe takes a bag from Sabrina and pops a couple of pieces into her mouth. Her eyes widen.

“Holy shit, this _is_ good.” Suddenly super hungry, she begins to stuff handfuls into her mouth. 

“Jeez, careful, Chlo,” Sabrina pokes Chloe’s shoulder. “I’d really rather not watch you choke to death on popcorn kernels.”

Chloe swallows the most recent handful of popcorn. She opens her mouth to reply but is silenced by a voice over the loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please,” a strong female voice booms through the stadium. “The annual Parisian Fencing Tournament is underway, where students from the four fencing academies of Paris face off to determine who will make it to Nationals. If I may introduce these academies...”

Chloe stops paying attention to the announcer when she spots Adrien standing against the back wall of the arena, in between a freakishly tall brown-haired kid and a shorter figure with a black bob, wearing red fencing gear that stood out against everyone else’s white gear.

_Is that…_

“There’s Kagami,” Chloe hears Alya declare. “I’m digging the red gear. She kinda looks like Ladybug.”

Chloe feels Marinette tense up beside her. “She’s missing the black spots, though.”

Alya giggles. “I was joking, Mari.”

Sabrina nudges Chloe’s side at the mention of Ladybug’s name. Chloe nudges back in acknowledgment. 

Knowing that she can’t see her, Chloe lets herself stare at Kagami, who looks like a red blob with black hair.

But Alya wasn’t wrong. Minus the spots and the fact that Kagami just moved here from Kyoto, that’s Ladybug.

Chloe feels her insides burning. She hasn’t been able to shake the _what if_ thoughts from her head. Yeah, Kagami isn’t Ladybug, but what if she had been? What if she’d lived in Paris all her life and became a beloved superhero? What if she’d hand-picked Chloe to be the holder of the Bee Miraculous? 

Chloe thinks back to second period when Kagami gave her that strange glare. She’s not used to people hating her guts, not anymore, and that icy look in Kagami’s eyes had stricken Chloe in the chest like lightning. It hurt, but she couldn’t get the new girl in a plaid skirt out of her head.  
Stupid. _I like Ladybug. I don’t even know Kagami._

To be fair, her brain inputs, you don’t really know Ladybug either.

_Shut up,_ Chloe replies.

Other fencers from different academies face each other, gracefully swinging at one another until getting a hit. But Chloe keeps her eyes glued to Adrien and Kagami. She watches his blond head lean close to hers and then watches her shoulders shake gently in a suppressed giggle. She watches them just quietly standing next to each other. They’re standing way too close to each other for how much room they have to space out. 

“Oh my God, he likes her,” she hears her own voice and the one to her right say at once.

Two hands clamp over two mouths and Chloe and Marinette slowly look at each other, neither removing their hands or saying anything. Alya leans forward to see what’s going on, and Chloe can feel Sabrina looking at her, too.

“I-I mean,” Chloe stammers, wondering how she’s gonna get herself out of this one. “Y’know, because I’m...in love with Adrien? Just like you are.”

Marinette lowers her head and Chloe instantly feels bad. “Um, but...I don’t like him that much, so…”

Panic begins to rise in her stomach. 

“Well, if he does like her, then it won’t matter,” Marinette says, a sad sigh in her voice. She turns her eyes back down to the arena. 

Chloe wants to fall over herself trying to apologize. She knows how much Marinette likes Adrien, and her panicked brain overrode her judgment before she spoke. She tries to think of something to say, some way to fix it but instead remains silent. In her head, she makes a decision and tries to leave it at that.

After a while, it’s finally Kagami’s turn in the spotlight, and Chloe involuntarily forgets about everything around her.

Kagami beats everyone she faces by a long shot. She moves like water in the arena, her movements precise, planned, fluid. Chloe’s brain is screaming Ladybug again, and she can’t make it shut up this time. She twirls a lock of her blonde ponytail between her fingers, completely entranced by the fencer in red.It doesn’t matter anymore if Kagami and Ladybug aren’t the same person. They move the same way, look the same way, and have similar attitudes. In Chloe’s brain, they’re two badasses with dark hair and red attire.

In other words, Chloe has it bad for two girls who could absolutely kick her ass.

Maybe that’s just her type.

 

+++

 

**Kagami**

 

Adrien hadn’t hit her earlier, but he gave her some modeling advice anyway before the tournament started. 

“First, it always helps to remember that you’re getting paid by the minute, basically,” he’d started as the two gathered their things and headed off the arena. “I don’t know if you’re about the money or anything, but it’ll be useful one way or another.”

“My parents are already loaded,” Kagami replied with a shrug. “But, I suppose having my own money might help me in the future.”

_I can visit my siblings as soon as I’m old enough for a passport._

“Second,” Adrien said as they wandered around the building, searching for the aforementioned training rooms, “This is kind of stupid, and since you’re new here I’m not even sure if it’ll help you, but, I always imagine that Ladybug came up to me and told me she had a super important task for me. Like, ‘Adrien, if you don’t do this photoshoot, Paris will be in danger, can I count on you?’ I dunno, that helps me feel like I’m doing something important, I think.”

Kagami nodded at him. “No, that’s not stupid at all. Also, I did a little research about the heroes and stuff before I moved.”

Adrien and Kagami finally found the training room and checked in with M. D’Argencourt. Adrien continued as they did their final stretches (mainly to prove to M. D’Argencourt that they hadn’t ditched warm-ups to sneak away and talk somewhere).

“Third,” he grunted with his last push-up, “bring snacks and try to take every spare second you have to yourself. Basically, sit and regroup your thoughts, try to calm yourself if you’re agitated, stuff like that. Sometimes you won’t get much time to yourself, but when you do, take advantage of it.”

Kagami stood over him, already having finished her twenty push-ups. “I’ll do my best.”  
“And, fourth,” Adrien finished, just before they walked back out into the now-full arena, “treat yourself in any way you can after the shoot is over. I have a personal ritual of playing video games with my best friend for a couple of hours after my shoots.”

They crossed the threshold between the hallway and the arena. 

“I’ll try that,” Kagami replies quietly. “Thank you, Adrien.”

Now, the tournament is over. She and Adrien both made it to Nationals, not that it matters for her. That was her last fencing tournament for God knows how long. 

Kagami sits in her desk chair, hunched over a piece of notebook paper, writing Adrien’s modeling tips down from memory in the light of her bedside lamp.

She hasn’t changed out of her fencing gear yet, wanting to hold onto the feeling of wearing it for the last time. At least, the last time for a while.

She’ll be wearing fencing gear during her photoshoots, but it won’t be hers. It won’t have been with her through the past year. 

She stumbles over to her bed and falls face-down onto it after switching off the lamp. She hears her phone buzzing on her nightstand, but can’t bring herself to look at it. Right now, she really doesn’t care. 

Kagami’s eyes fall shut, though she’s far from tired.

Her parents hadn’t even bothered to congratulate her after the tournament was over. They attended, along with Himari, but said nothing. Himari was the one to speak up on the way home an hour ago.

“I’m glad you made Nationals,” she’d said cautiously. “You did an amazing job, you know.”

“I wish it mattered,” Kagami muttered coldly. “I wish anything mattered, at all.”

“I know.” Himari kept her eyes on the road in front of her, but Kagami felt like she was staring straight at her. “Listen, no matter what you’re forced into, you’ll always come back to what you love doing most. If that’s fencing, you’ll come back to it.”

Kagami knows she was right. She doesn’t know what she loves most quite yet, but she knows what she’s familiar with. Right now, all she knows is that she’s grateful to have Himari. And she’s grateful to have Adrien now, too.

She thanks the powers that be that Adrien talked to her on Friday afternoon before she drops into a light sleep.

She’s still wearing her fencing gear.

 

+++

 

**Chloe**

 

**Hey.**

Chloe lies under the thick comforter on her bed, staring nervously at her phone screen. 

After the tournament was over, Chloe’s chauffeur took Sabrina home. Chloe’s grateful that she didn’t ask her any questions about what she’d said to Marinette; she plans to explain that after Marinette replies to her. _If_ she replies to her. Not even because she might be upset; just because Marinette is the worst at replying to texts.

Chloe runs over the situation in her head one more time: in a frazzled attempt not to out herself, she lied to Marinette and Alya about having a thing for Adrien. This clearly upset Marinette, and instead of apologizing up front, Chloe said nothing and decided to come out to her over text later that night.

Later that night was right now. If she’d told Sabrina about her plan, she probably would have encouraged it. “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with, but if you want to, go for it,” Chloe can practically hear her saying.

Chloe curls herself further into her duvet, letting out a frustrated groan. _Why do I have to be such a mess?_

After thirty minutes of scrolling through Instagram (trying to find a certain Kagami Tsurugi’s profile) in an attempt to distract herself, she still hasn’t gotten a reply. It’s now 10:37 PM, and she knows she won’t last much longer before passing out. 

In a hazy, split-second decision, she reopens her Marinette’s text thread, which is practically empty, save for her “Hey” from half an hour ago. 

**I just wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. I actually don’t like Adrien, I like Kagami. Surprise, I’m a lesbian!**

No, no--Chloe rapidly backspaces the text away. 

**I wanted to apologize for what I said at the tournament. I wasn’t thinking, and I know I hurt your feelings, so, I’m sorry.**

She hits send, takes a deep breath, and begins typing again. 

**I was trying to cover something up when I said I liked Adrien because I don’t. I’ve never had feelings for Adrien. I think I have a crush on Kagami, though, and that’s why I was worried Adrien liked her.**

Send. 

**I didn’t want to out myself like that, so I freaked out and said the first thing that came to mind.**

Send. 

With that, Chloe locks her phone and tosses it to the other side of her queen bed. She curls herself around her yellow teddy bear until she’s invisible beneath the comforter. 

“My Queen, everything’s going to be okay.” 

Chloe hears the familiar tiny voice from above her. She pops her head out and meets Pollen’s eyes. 

"I’ve had gay holders before, and so has every other kwami. You’re not less of a person because of it.” 

Chloe lets out a soft chuckle and reaches up with one arm, stroking Pollen’s cheek with her index finger. “Thanks, Pollen.” 

Pollen flies down and perches herself on the pillow beside Chloe’s head. “I think you can trust Marinette, too. She always tries to make everyone happy, and I think she’ll do the same for you.” 

“You’re right,” Chloe murmurs sleepily. “I don’t even know what I’m worried about anymore.”  
She feels Pollen nuzzle into her hair, which is where she likes to sleep on most nights. When she needs space, she sleeps in a little nook Chloe made for her, under the box spring of the bed. 

“You’re worried because your feelings are shifting to someone else,” Pollen states. Chloe can’t get over how wise she always sounds. “You just got used to your feelings for Ladybug, and you’re going through that all over again with someone new.” 

“Mm,” Chloe hums, letting her eyes close again. “Yeah, probably. You always know me better than I know myself, Pollen.” 

“I’m always here when you need me, My Queen,” Pollen says cheerfully. 

“Thank you,” Chloe slurs, now half-asleep. “Goodnight, Pollen. Love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

For the first time in months, Chloe doesn’t dream of Ladybug. 


	6. Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey fellas, i'm sorry the publishing of new chapters has been taking a while. i've been pretty busy and stressed, but things should by dying back down soon. i'm still v excited about this fic and i hope y'all like it too!!

The day Chloe found out about the Behind The Masks club, she’d avoided the meetings at all costs. It was the first day of her junior year, in September. Alya had enlisted the help of Nathaniel and Alix to make and hang posters around the school, created a Discord server for the club, and even prepared a PowerPoint to present to the class as a recruitment technique.

“What better way to unmask our favorite heroes than to put our heads together and _theorize?”_ She’d emitted, her eyes shining. “I’ve been planning this since May, when the fifth hero, Queen Bee, made her debut. I’m _super_ stoked to finally bring it to life. Meetings will be held in the library on Thursdays right after school. Trust me, this club is going to go places.”

Chloe had felt her entire face go beet red. Pollen shifted uncomfortably from inside her jacket. Everyone else, though, was overwhelmingly on board with the idea. Her mind began to race. 

_Will I seem suspicious if I don’t join?_

_Will I seem suspicious if I_ do?

_They’ll figure out who I am regardless, I look just like Queen Bee…_

For the first few weeks, Chloe avoided the library like the plague. During meetings, she’d sneak up to the window and peek in, seeing everybody from her class (minus Adrien, Marinette, and Nino, curiously) sitting in wooden chairs arranged in a semicircle around Alya. She had a whiteboard propped up on an easel from the art room and was talking vividly to her little crowd, arms moving wildly with each word. 

But over time, people stopped showing up. Each week, there were a couple fewer of her classmates in the library.

One day, no one but Alya showed up. Chloe stood on her tiptoes and watched her hunch her shoulders defeatedly, moving to pack away her whiteboard in a black zip-up case. Before she could stop herself, Chloe pushed the library door open. She pulled a chair from under one of the tables and dragged it to where Alya was slowly putting away her things. Startled, Alya whirled around and scrunched her nose when she saw Chloe.  
“You’ve never come to one of these, why start now?” Alya grumbled, crossing her arms.  
Chloe tried hard not to fumble over her words. “I...was embarrassed to admit that I’m really into superheroes.” She shrugged up at Alya, whose gaze had already softened a little.

“Ladybug’s my favorite,” Chloe added. She held her breath, hoping Alya wouldn’t kick her out.   
Alya couldn’t force the smile from her lips. “My favorite is Rena Rouge.” She nervously pointed to the fox pendant around her neck, a very close replica of Rena Rouge’s Miraculous. “As you can see.”

Chloe and Alya held the meeting by themselves, gushing over their favorite heroes and wondering together about other possible Miraculous out there. 

That particular October Thursday kindled the friendship between the two. Before then, Alya had still hated her guts. Understandably.

A little over a month later, it’s a November Thursday, and the Behind The Masks club has gained a few permanent members. 

Marinette finally joined after Alya bugged her about it for weeks. Adrien joined after Chloe convinced him to over FaceTime (“You talk about Chat Noir like he’s God, Adrien. That’s the type of thing we do at the meetings, dummy.”). And Nino joined after the combined pleading from Alya and Adrien drove him crazy.

 

Chloe hasn’t yet managed to get Sabrina to come, in lieu of her anxiety around people she doesn’t know very well.

There are only five of them, but they have a blast, especially since the club’s objective changed from discovering the heroes’ identities to making and doing hero-related things. Alya changed the name to the Lucky Charm Club, too, just to shake things up some more. 

Thursday has become Chloe’s favorite day of the week.

“Okay,” Nino mumbles distractedly, eyes glued to his laptop. “Okay, I just had the file pulled up…”

“Are you sure you saved it?” Chloe asks from across the table. Everyone knows about Nino’s infamous tendency to make music and then forget to save it afterward.

“Yeah, when you stay up all night with your music, you tend to...y’know, not save it,” Alya echoes Chloe’s thoughts.

“No, I saved it,” Nino answers. “I saved it, like, seven times. Just to be sure.”  
“Hmm,” Alya hums skeptically.

“Where’s Mari?” Adrien suddenly wonders aloud. He glances anxiously at the door. 

“She told me she’d be late,” Alya tells him, pulling out her phone. “It’s only been ten minutes, I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”

Chloe winces at the mention of Marinette’s name.

Marinette had never responded to her coming-out text from Monday night, and she’s seemingly been avoiding her since then. Marinette doesn’t talk to her much to begin with, but she’s been talking to her...extra-not much, in Chloe’s eyes. Her anxiety has been at an all-time high since Tuesday morning. Chloe had been low-key hoping that Marinette didn’t show up to the meeting this week so she wouldn’t have to sit face-to-face with her for an hour.

Chloe’s soul nearly leaves her body when she hears the door open behind her. She’s been super on-edge, and little noises have been scaring the hell out of her. 

In strides Marinette, holding a garment covered in plastic. Behind her, a tall boy in a Jagged Stone T-shirt and dip-dyed blue hair comes in with his hands in his pockets. _That must be Luka._  
And after Luka, none other than Kagami Tsurugi walks in, her hands clasped in front of each other down at her waist. Chloe’s heart stops and time seems to slow down for a minute.   
Chloe hasn’t had the chance to fully take in Kagami’s appearance at this point. Plaid skirt and matching tie, black tights, black shirt, white cardigan. Jesus. She looks so sophisticated. The way she’s dressed reminds her of the way Pollen talks. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Marinette says breathlessly, sounding like she’d just ran a marathon. “I forgot this in my room this morning, so I had Luka drive me home before the meeting to grab it. Oh, this is Luka, by the way.”

Marinette sets the garment down on the table and gestures towards Luka. He waves shyly at the group.

“Hey,” he greets them quietly.

“Oh, I know Luka,” Alya remarks slyly. 

“Shut up, Alya,” Marinette retorts playfully, pulling two chairs from another table and moving them to theirs.

Chloe glances at Adrien, whose face is the color of Kagami’s fencing gear. His eyes are moving rapidly between Marinette and Luka. He doesn’t even look at Kagami. Maybe he doesn’t like her after all.

Chloe frowns curiously. She’s never questioned whether or not Adrien is straight before, but watching his gaze flick between Marinette and Luka makes her wonder. Has he even _met_ Luka? Have the three of them been talking to each other outside of school?

“And,” Marinette adds between huffed breaths from moving the chairs, “I’m sure you all remember Kagami. I invited her and Luka to join, so now we’re up to seven members!”

“Hello.” Kagami’s greeting sounds more like a declaration. Like she’s saying, _“My name is Kagami and I could kick all of your asses at once.”_

Or maybe Chloe’s reaching a little.  
Marinette moves one of the chairs next to her own, and drags the other one all the way around to place it beside Chloe’s.

Of all things to happen next, Chloe does not expect Marinette to meet her eyes and wink at her.  
But, that’s what happens.

Chloe feels her mouth go agape. Did Marinette invite Kagami to the meeting...for her? 

Her heart races a hundred miles per hour as Kagami moves to sit next to her. Chloe’s surprised at this, considering that death glare Kagami gave her in study hall on Monday. And on Tuesday. And yesterday. And today.

Kagami places her hands delicately in her lap. Every muscle in Chloe’s body tenses up. Flashbacks to Monday night run through her head. Kagami’s fencing, beating every opponent, graceful and sure-footed…

“Okay, I found it!” Nino shouts triumphantly, scaring Chloe out of her gay thoughts.

“Oh, is it the song you talked about last week?” Marinette places her elbows on the table and rests her head on her fists. “The Carapace one?”

“Yeah,” Nino replies, finally looking up from the laptop. “Oh, I guess I should explain to the newbies.” He looks between Kagami and Luka. “I decided to start working on a project for the club. I’m gonna make a theme song for all five of the heroes, and we’re gonna try to have them played at next year’s Heroes’ Day parade. Basically, everything we do is for the parade at this point.”

“Oh, you make music?” Luka inquires excitedly. “I do, too!”

“Awesome, dude!” Nino exclaims. “Would you wanna help me with this project, then?”

Luka’s eyes go wide. “Really? A-are you sure? I’d hate to impose--”

“Of course, dude,” Nino interrupts, giving Luka his signature Soft Nino Look. “I’ve actually always wanted to collab with someone.” Nino raises his fist to Luka. “You down?”

Luka stares at Nino’s fist for a moment before bumping it with his own. “Hell yeah, I’m down.”

“All right,” Alya interjects, placing a hand on top of Nino’s. “Let’s talk business, fellas. Mari, what’s in the bag?”

“Oh!” Marinette stands and removes the plastic covering from its contents. “It’s actually more of a cover. I made something, and I want everyone’s opinion.”

She pulls out a perfect replica of Chat Noir’s suit. It’s not reflective like the real thing, but it looks exactly like it. The belt tail, the little bell at the neck, even the ridiculous little pockets.

Everyone gasps. Adrien perks up.

“Oh my God, Mari,” Adrien says, awestruck in tone. “I’ve seen some good cosplay, but that’s next level.”

A blush creeps across Marinette’s face. “Thank you! I-it took me all week to make, but I think it’ll look good on you--I MEAN it’ll look good on whoever wears it!”

Before Marinette continues spewing words at Adrien, Luka puts a hand on her back. She stops talking and takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Adrien.”

“What is it for?” Kagami asks. Chloe feels breathless after just hearing her speak. She’s already decided she loves Kagami’s voice. It’s deeper than the average girl’s, rougher, with a little more edge.

Everything that used to happen to her with Ladybug--heart speeding up, getting flustered, zoning out--is happening all over again with Kagami. Pollen was right. 

“That’s actually what I was gonna talk about.” Marinette sets down the suit and sits back down in her chair. “This isn’t for Heroes’ Day, because I’m already gonna be swamped that day, but I was thinking we could all cosplay the heroes? Like, at a convention, or something.” She blushes again. “I...I dunno, I had a hankering to make one of the suits, and I think it’d be really fun.”  
Chloe immediately imagines Kagami wearing Ladybug’s suit and her insides turn to mush.

“I call Ladybug!” Adrien announces instantly.

Chloe shakes her head, trying to ground herself. She looks at Adrien and chuckles. “Only if I can be Ladybug, too.” Adrien fake-pouts at her, sticking out his bottom lip.

“Oh, oh, can I be Chat Noir?” Nino pleads to Marinette. 

“I kind of want to be Rena Rouge,” Luka says. “Even though my hair totally doesn’t match.”

Marinette giggles. “Everyone can be whichever hero they want to. Ideally, we’d all choose a different one, but with our new members, there’ll have be a couple duplicates.”

“Wait,” Kagami chimes in. “There are other heroes besides Ladybug and Chat Noir?”

“Oh, yeah!” Marinette answers her. “There are five in total. Ladybug, Chat Noir, Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Queen Bee.” She looks Chloe dead in the eyes when she mentions Queen Bee. 

Fear pricks in her chest.

“Chloe, would you mind showing Kagami pictures of the other three?” Marinette asks her sweetly, smiling wide.

_So she clearly got my text on Monday, then._

“Yeah, of course!” Chloe says too-brightly, pulling her phone out. She can feel Kagami looking at her from her side.

She holds her phone so that Kagami can see. “So, this is Rena Rouge, this is Carapace, and this is Queen Bee.” Chloe swipes to the left with each name. Kagami nods thoughtfully.

“That’s strange.” Kagami places one elbow on the table and rests her head in her hand. She’s making eye contact with Chloe, which is wreaking all sorts of internal havoc. “I did research on the heroes and the akumas before I moved here, and I only ever found anything about Ladybug and Chat Noir.”

Kagami continues to make eye contact with Chloe as she talks, and she’s not glaring this time. Although, it looks like she’s fighting the urge to. _I’ll take what I can get, I guess._

“There isn’t a lot of coverage of the other three,” Alya tells Kagami, rolling her eyes. “Like, big coverage, that is. They’re never on the news or anything. The only news about them is on my Ladyblog. That’s probably why you didn’t find anything about it.”

“Hmm,” Kagami hums. She turns her head back to Chloe. “What are their powers?”

_Is she asking_ me _that? Directly?_ “Uh...” Chloe utters, clearing her throat. “Well, Rena’s power is her Mirage. She can create any temporary illusion. And, um, Carapace’s power is his Shellter, which is sort of like a forcefield.”

“And what about Queen Bee’s?” Kagami cuts in, a completely unreadable expression on her face. Chloe’s chest is on fire.

“Ah, Queen Bee’s power is her Venom. It...it can freeze anyone or anything in place. Her power is most useful for intangible akumas...er, akumas that aren’t, like, solid.”

“I know what intangible means,” Kagami says coolly. Chloe internally smacks herself in the forehead. _Of course she knows what intangible means, dumbass._

Kagami sits back up, straightening her back and folding her hands in her lap again. “I think I want to be Queen Bee,” she declares. “When we do our cosplaying.”

Chloe’s heart pounds. She’d figured Kagami would’ve chosen Chat Noir because of his baton, or something like that. _Why’d she choose Queen Bee? Why’d she choose me?_

Marinette beams at her words. “Awesome! So, we’ve got Adrien and Chloe as Ladybug, Nino as Chat Noir, Luka as Rena Rouge, and Kagami as Queen Bee.”

“I’ll be Carapace,” Alya says, raising a hand slightly. “He’s pretty cool.”

“Perfect.” Marinette pulls a little notepad out of her purse, scribbling quickly. “And...I’ll be Chat Noir, too. I made this suit to fit myself, anyway.”

“Two Chat Noirs and two Ladybugs,” Adrien remarks genially. “That’ll be interesting.”

Everyone laughs, even Kagami, who didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor before. Her laugh is like her voice, rough around the edges yet very, very soft.

Like a teddy bear holding a knife.

“All right, let’s listen to Nino’s song before we leave,” Alya suggests, leaning back in her chair. “He let me listen to it this morning and it’s _really_ good.”

Nino hooks up his mini speaker to his laptop and plays his song. Chloe closes her eyes as she listens, tapping her fingertips lightly on the edge of the table with the beat.

Since May, when Chloe first began trying to improve upon herself, she’s been experiencing everything differently. On top of feeling more and letting herself feel more, she sees music in a whole different light. As part of her self-exploration process, she’ll sometimes just lie in bed with her headphones in, hit shuffle on her Spotify song list, and listen to whatever comes up. This is something that Sabrina had suggested to her, “It’s something I do that really helps me, and it might help you, too.”

Nino’s song makes her feel like she’s in the bathroom of a nightclub. It’s smooth, like lo-fi battle music. She sways gently with each note.

“I hope you guys like it.” Nino unplugs the mini speaker once the song is over. Chloe opens her eyes and slightly turns her head to her right to sneak a glance at Kagami.

Kagami’s staring at her. Chloe averts her gaze just as quickly as she’d met it, furiously willing the blush to leave her face. _Was she watching me? Oh, God, she thinks I’m embarrassing._

“It’s really good,” Chloe says in praise, her face still burning. “Definitely gives me Carapace vibes.”

She meets Marinette’s eyes from across the table. She’s got a smug little grin on her mouth. Jeez. Chloe lowers her head, making a mental note to have a chat with Marinette after the meeting’s over.

“I _love_ it, dude.” Luka leans forward, a wide grin on his face. “I’m even more excited to make music with you now.”

Adrien shoots a thumbs-up at Nino. “Amazing as usual, dude.”

From beside Chloe, Kagami lightly clears her throat. “I don’t know a lot about music, but I think your song sounds nice, Nino.”

Nino smiles at her.

“I _told_ you they’d like it, silly.” Alya squeezes his hand.

“Oh, you guys.” Nino waves a hand in faux dismissal, blushing. “It’s nothing, really.”

“So that settles it,” Marinette announces cheerfully. “Nino, you can make songs for the other heroes, and we’ll email to them to the guys in charge of events in Paris.”

“Not to flex too hard on you guys, but I’m about to be famous,” Nino purses his lips and crosses his arms. “Bow to me.”

Alya smirks and rolls her eyes. “I’m good, babe. But, I’m proud of you.”

“All right, our hour is up!” Marinette stands and slings the plastic-clad Chat Noir suit over her shoulder. “Unless anyone else has something to add?”

A little chorus of “Nope,” and “Nothing from me,” breaks out in response.

“Meeting adjourned.” Marinette does a little curtsy.

Alya and Nino file out of the library, followed closely by a flustered Adrien. Luka whispers something to Marinette, and she nods at him. 

“Hey, Adrien!” Luka calls after him, bursting out of the library door. Marinette chuckles and shakes her head. She turns to Chloe, and her smile fades.

Kagami quietly stands, pushing her chair in. “I’ll go ahead and leave, too.” She turns towards Marinette. “Thank you for inviting me to the meeting. I had a good time.”

“Of course!” Marinette beams. “You’re always welcome to come back, too.”

Kagami nods then shoots Chloe a quick glance. Chloe’s heart flutters. 

She wonders if Kagami will address her, but she doesn’t. She slings her backpack around her shoulders and wordlessly takes her leave. 

Marinette clears her throat once the library is empty.

“Hey, Chloe…” she begins, anxiously shifting her weight. “I wanted to apologize for not replying to you on Monday.”

Chloe rises from her seat, stuffing her phone in her back pocket. A nervous twinge overtakes her stomach.

“Why...didn’t you?” is all she can think to say.

“Well, I didn’t know what to say, at first,” Marinette confesses, lowering her eyes. “Because we’ve only been friends since May or June, y’know? I was caught off guard and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I thought I could try to make it up by having Kagami sit next to you during the meeting, but I doubt that really helped anything.”

Chloe sometimes forgets that Marinette used to hate her guts. She hadn’t considered before that she isn’t used to Chloe telling her personal things. Or just telling her things in general.

“I’m not mad at you, Mari,” Chloe says with a sigh. “And, truthfully...it kinda did help. It was a sweet gesture.”

Marinette meets Chloe’s eyes again. “Really?”

Chloe nods. “Plus, everyone knows you’re famously terrible at replying to texts, anyway,” she adds teasingly. Marinette giggles.

“Yeah, I really am.” She repositions the Chat Noir suit on her shoulder. “Um...thank you for talking about it with me, Chloe. I’m glad we can talk about this kind of thing now.”

“Me too,” Chloe agrees warmly.

At that moment, Chloe hears the door creak open behind her. Luka pokes his head through.  
“Ready, Mari?” 

Directly beneath Luka’s head, Adrien’s appears. He smiles widely at Chloe.

_I’ll call you later,_ he mouths at her. Chloe nods at him, returning his smile.

“Yeah, I’m ready!” Marinette stoops to pick up her purse, the plastic garment cover crinkling with every movement. She looks at Chloe. “Do you want Luka to drive you to the hotel?”

Chloe shakes her head. “No, thank you. It isn’t too cold out today, so I was gonna walk home.”

“That’s fine,” Marinette says, briskly walking to the door. Chloe picks up her bag and follows her. 

“Be careful, though,” Adrien pipes up. “The ice on the roads is still melting, so it’s a little slippery.”

The four make their way towards the front of the school, parting ways at the main doors.

As Chloe walks home, hands in her coat pockets, her mind wanders. She thinks about Kagami, about “Luk-adri-nette,” as Alya had put it, about Ladybug.

How could she be certain she’s over Ladybug? Well, other than the fact that it’s been almost a full week since Chloe has seen her, and she doesn’t feel like she’s dying…

She wonders how she and the others have been doing. She and Chat haven’t needed Queen Bee’s power for any of the recent akumas, though Chloe has seen Carapace out with them a few times. She wishes there was a way to talk to all of them out-of-costume. Even though they know nothing about each other, Chloe’s grown attached. 

After she finishes her homework, Chloe sits on the floor in front of her balcony window, watching nothing in particular.

Rena Rouge and Chat Noir catch her eye in the distance. Much to Chloe’s surprise, she isn’t disappointed when she doesn’t see Ladybug with them. _God, what’s happening to me?_


	7. Pose

**Kagami**

 

Chloe Bourgeois is scared of Kagami. There’s no other explanation for the way she acts around her.

Not that she’s been thinking about Chloe Bourgeois, of course.

_She should be scared of me. I could snap her like a twig,_ Kagami thinks to herself, swinging the sabre in her hand wildly at another training dummy. This is her third visit to the local gym this week. She’d figured she should get as much fencing time in as possible before her modeling garbage starts, which is in a little over an hour. She feels hot with anger after remembering this and lets out a loud, frustrated cry. 

 

It’s Friday afternoon; the start to her first weekend in public school. She’s grateful, though it hasn’t been quite as bad as she’d feared it would be. Even Chloe isn’t quite as bad as she’d feared. She seems so timid and meek in comparison to the monster she’d read about on Google. There have been six akumas this week, and Chloe wasn’t the cause of any of them, which was...statistically improbable. Again, in comparison to what Google had said.

Kagami gets one last strike at the training dummy before deciding to call it quits, thrusting up her helmet and whirling around to face Himari.

“So? How’d I do?”

Himari uncrosses her arms and pushes off of the wall, moving to stand beside Kagami.

“Only one dummy destroyed today. _And_ you didn’t break any of the gym’s sabres or rapiers.”   
Himari wipes an imaginary tear from her eye and fakes a sniffle. “I’m...so proud of you.”

Kagami chuckles, kneeling to put her helmet in her athletic bag. She stands and hoists it onto her shoulder. “I’m really getting better, huh?”

Himari nods as the two head towards the front. She furrows her brows and looks between Kagami and the changing rooms in the back of the gym. “Aren’t you gonna change?”

Kagami shakes her head, pulling out her debit card and handing it to the cashier. He accepts it without batting an eye; the gym staff has already gotten used to Kagami coming in and breaking their stuff. They still had no gall to tell her to stop.

“I’m gonna have to change at the Agreste’s mansion anyway, so there’s no reason for me to change twice.” She takes her card back from the cashier and offers a quick “thank you.”

“But you’re still all sweaty,” Himari points out as they get into her car. Kagami slings her bag into the backseat and slides in after it.

She hasn’t considered that. “Well...don’t they use photoshop anyway? Can’t they just remove the sweat?”

Kagami likes talking to Himari because she can get out her whole thought process without being interrupted or judged. She can hardly get a word in with her parents. Or most of her classmates, as it turns out. 

Himari and Adrien are the only people she really trusts right now. They’re the only people who have proven to her that they’re on her side.

“I mean, maybe,” Himari answers from the driver’s seat, starting up the car. “Or maybe they have a shower you could use.”

“I don’t like the idea of using the shower in a stranger’s house,” Kagami responds, leaning her head against the car window. “I don’t know. As long as I rinse my face off, or something, I should be fine. I have deodorant in my bag, too.”

Himari shrugs. “I agree, I think you’ll be fine.”

Kagami tries hard to ignore the anxious energy blooming in her chest. She stares out the window, focusing on the outlines of the gray clouds above. She wonders if it’s going to rain.

“Oh, your mother is glad you joined that club,” Himari tells her. “She said it’s good that you’re branching out.”

“The superhero club? It was okay.” An image of Queen Bee flashes through her mind. Kagami still doesn’t know what it is about that particular hero that entices her so. Queen Bee has a striking similarity to Chloe, which Kagami thinks is interesting.

Chloe couldn’t actually _be_ Queen Bee, though. Cameras follow that girl everywhere, so if she was, everybody would know.

Kagami shifts, sitting up straight. She considers mentioning this to Himari, but ultimately decides against it.

She changes the subject instead. “I still think my real parents were replaced or something. Tsurugi Kanade would never want me to ‘branch out.’”

“I know this is still really confusing for you,” Himari offers softly. “And I don’t know what her intentions are, but I’m sure she means well.”

Kagami lets out an agitated sigh. “She hasn’t meant well since the day she was born. My father probably means well, but the only good thing my mother has ever done for me is forcing me into fencing.” She suddenly feels like she’s going to cry. “And then she has to go and force me out of it.”

“I’m sorry, Kagami,” Himari says with a sad glance at her through the rearview mirror. “There’s really nothing else I can say.”

The car slows to a stop as they pull up to the Agreste mansion front. Himari silently puts the car in park and shuts off the engine.

Kagami hesitates before opening the door. “I’m...just glad I don’t have to do this by myself. I’m glad I have you with me, at least.”

Himari smiles softly at her through the rearview. “I’ll do anything I can to help you through this, Kagami. You ready to go in?”

Kagami nods. “I’m not gonna be any _more_ ready, I suppose.”

The two get out of the car and ring the doorbell outside of the gate. Kagami takes a deep breath and musters all the patience in the universe into her chest.

 

+++

**Chloe, the night before**

 

“Hey, Adrien.” Chloe is lying on her couch, Sailor Moon on pause, holding her phone in front of her face. “What’s up? You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Hey!” His voice cracks, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He’s lying in his bed, his hair all disheveled. “Yeah, yeah, I did!”

“Well, spill!” Chloe urges, smirking at Adrien through her front camera. It’s all she has to say for Adrien’s eyes to light up and his face to break out into a huge smile.

“I, um…” he begins, his cheery confidence fading with each word. His face scrunches up in thought. “Huh. This is really weird for me to say.” He puts a hand over his eyes, flustered. 

“It’s okay,” Chloe encourages, painfully familiar with the way Adrien is feeling. “You can tell me literally anything, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know.” Adrien removes his hand and stares at something to the right of his phone’s camera, his mouth twinging to the side a bit.

“I guess I should slow down,” he says after a minute. He inhales deeply. “So, I’ve known this about myself for...a few months, now. And I wanted to tell you, but I was scared you’d, like, be mad at me? Or something. But...I’m bisexual.”

Chloe blinks. _So he isn’t straight,_ Chloe thinks. She wonders if she’s a bad friend for always assuming that he was.

_Other non-straight people I know: Sabrina, Rose, Juleka, Luka, Adrien,_ Chloe is glad to expand her list again.

“Really?” Chloe asks, excitement in her voice. “That’s awesome, Adrien!”

Because it is. It’s awesome that Chloe isn’t alone in who she is. It’s awesome that she’s learning about the people around her. Especially the most important ones to her, like Sabrina, and now, like Adrien. 

It’s Adrien’s turn to blink at her. “It’s...awesome? You really think so? You aren’t mad?”

“Why would I be mad, silly?” Chloe exclaims. “I’m really glad you told me. How...how did you figure it out?”

A blush creeps across Adrien’s face. “Um, well...that’s actually part of the news I have to share.”

“Let’s hear it,” Chloe says enthusiastically. She wonders if it somehow has something to do with his conversation with Luka after the meeting earlier. 

“Well...this is a little embarrassing, but I used to have a thing for Ladybug,” Adrien begins. Chloe’s stifles a chuckle. _You and me both._

“I won’t get all into that part of it. But it was difficult, y’know, because I’m a regular civilian and she’s a superhero. So after a while, I could feel myself moving on. Over the summer this year, I spent a lot of time with Mari and Luka at Luka’s house...boat. Houseboat.”

Chloe remembers Adrien talking a lot about Marinette over the summer. But he’d never talked about Luka.

Adrien continues. “And of course, by a lot I mean as often as my father would let me leave the house. And we’d just have dumb little jam sessions. Like, I’d be on keys, Luka would play his guitar, and Mari would sing. She can sing, by the way, and she’s really good at it, her voice is angelic--”

Adrien interrupts himself when he realizes he’s rambling. “Sorry. Okay, so I spent time with Luka and Mari. At first, I just had a little crush on Mari. And it was fine, it was all going well. But, I could tell that Luka had a crush on her, too, and you know what?”

“What?” Chloe asks him once she realizes he’s waiting for a response.

“I didn’t feel jealous at all. I felt, like, _glad._ And it was really weird because I was always jealous over Ladybug. But when the three of us were hanging out, I was happy, even when Luka was practicing his mad flirting skills with Mari.

“And, skip to the start of school in September, I didn’t see Luka as often and I was thinking about him a lot. I still had feelings for Mari, but I also was starting to have feelings for Luka, too. It was really confusing for me because I expected my crush on Mari to go away. But it didn’t.”

Chloe opens her mouth to speak when Adrien continues. As quiet and polite as he is in school, he’s the most chatty person Chloe knows, especially when he has a story to tell over FaceTime. Bonus points if it’s after ten P.M. Which, right now, it is.

“So I consulted Google, like, ‘hey, I have feelings for two people, what’s wrong with me’? And Google spits this term I’ve never heard of back at me.”

Adrien pauses to slide his hand in front of his face, as though showcasing something invisible.

“Polyamorous.”

Chloe tilts her head curiously. Adrien continues talking.

“It’s what you call a person who can love more than one person at once. I sort of mindlessly accepted that I was bi after realizing I liked Luka, but after reading about polyamory and sort of applying it to myself, it made sense, too. I...think I’m both bisexual _and_ polyamorous.”

Chloe waits a moment before she speaks, just in case. When Adrien doesn’t say anything, she takes in a breath, choosing her words carefully. She’s never heard of polyamory before, trying to wrap her head around the concept. She thinks back to earlier that night when Marinette was talking about her and Luka’s feelings for Adrien. Are they _all_ polyamorous? And is polyamory a separate sexuality from being straight?

_Other non-straight people I know: Sabrina, Rose, Juleka, Luka, Adrien, Marinette (?)_  
Not to mention, how does someone get so lucky as to find not one, but _two_ people who are perfect matches for them like that? Chloe feels a twinge of jealousy in her gut.

She shakes herself out of her wandering mind.

“I’m really proud of you, Adrien,” She tells him truthfully, keeping her questions to herself for now. “I’m proud of you for doing a little self-exploration.” Chloe had stolen that phrase from Sabrina, who had stolen it from her therapist. “I hope everything works out for you three.”

Adrien blushes again. “Thanks, Chlo. Realistically, I knew you wouldn’t judge me, but anxiety was kind of getting to me. It feels good to have told someone.”

Chloe knows how he feels. She remembers the immediate relief of her coming out to Sabrina. She likes that she shares such a wonderful feeling with Adrien.

Which gives her an idea.

“Hey,” Chloe starts. Adrien perks up, though she can tell he’s getting sleepy. 

“Yeah?”

“I wanna tell you something, too.”

“What’s that?” Adrien says, copying Chloe’s yawn from before. 

Strangely, Chloe doesn’t feel nervous. She feels tingly with anticipation, her brain trying to shove the words off her tongue in a jumble. She takes a moment to mentally steady herself.

“Well, it’s really similar to what you told me.” Chloe’s hands begin to clam up. She moves her phone to left hand to wipe her right one off on her pant leg. “I, um, I also used to have a thing for Ladybug.”

Adrien’s eyes widen. “No _way.”_

Chloe nods, smiling sleepily. “I’m, uh, a lesbian.” It doesn’t come out as smoothly as she wants it to. She’d wanted to have a story behind it, like Adrien did, but at this point, she just wants to say it. She just wants him to know already.

“Chloe!” Adrien shouts, though trying to stay quiet. “Really?”

“Yep,” Chloe affirms with a little nod. “To keep my whole backstory short, I’ll just say that I used to have it bad for Ladybug, but in the last week...it’s, um, shifted. To someone else.”

She hadn’t planned on telling him about her crush on Kagami, but words just keep falling out of her mouth. _Dammit, Bourgeois._

“Who is it now?” Adrien asks. “Unless you don’t wanna say. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Chloe sighs. She’s already come this far, she supposes. “It’s...Kagami. The new student from Kyoto.”

She shudders at the way it feels to say Kagami’s name. It feels forbidden, like eating one too many chocolates. If she gets a rush just from saying her name, how is she ever going to manage to speak to her? She’ll probably act like Marinette acts around Adrien. 

“She’s in my fencing class!” Adrien says excitedly. His face falls suddenly. “Or, she _was._ Her parents are forcing her into modeling and pulling her out of the D’Argencourt academy.”

“Modeling?” Chloe echoes. She hasn’t known Kagami for longer than a week, but modeling seems like something she’d scoff at. 

“Yeah. Um, long story short, my father got in touch with her mother about it. He already knew who Kagami was, since the Tsurugi family is super famous in the world of fencing. I don’t know what possessed my father to start a line of fencing gear, but…” Adrien trails off with a shrug.

Chloe hums softly in reply. “Why does she have to stop fencing, though? Couldn’t she do both? _You_ do both, plus you’re taking a private Chinese class, _and_ you’re going to public school.”

Adrien shrugs again. “Kagami told me the modeling thing came out of left field for her. Her parents were super fencing-driven her whole life, and suddenly they want her to stop. I feel really bad for her.”

“Yeah,” Chloe murmurs, not sure what else to say. She’s starting to get sleepier by the second.

“Hold on, I have an idea,” Adrien pipes up. 

“Hmm?” Chloe hums. 

“I know this is short notice, but our first shoot for the fencing gear is tomorrow after school,” Adrien says. “If you want to come to watch, I’m sure my father won’t mind.”

Chloe’s heart lurches. “What? Won’t...won’t Kagami feel weird about that?”

Adrien considers this. “I’ll text her and ask if she’s okay with it. And before you say anything, I’m _just_ gonna tell her you’re coming to see me. I won’t say anything else, I promise.”

_You have Kagami’s number?_ is the first thought Chloe has. _Can I have it?_ is the second.

“You’d do that for me?” Chloe asks rhetorically, knowing fully well what Adrien is like. He’s the most thoughtful person on this planet.

“Of course I would, Chlo,” he assures her with a smile. “The shoot’s gonna be at my house, by the way, since it’ll be raining all day tomorrow.”

“I’ll just come straight over after school, then,” Chloe says, stifling yet another yawn. “Hey, I know this night is important for us and I’m glad we talked, but right now a bitch is sleepy.”

“Me too,” Adrien agrees. “I’ll see you tomor--oh, wait, I forgot to ask. Do you want Sabrina to come with you, so you don’t feel as awkward?”

He really is the most thoughtful person on this planet. Chloe loves him so much. 

“Yeah, that would be good,” Chloe answers. “Thank you.”

Adrien nods. “Okay, _now_ I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Chloe giggles. “Goodnight, Adrien. Love you.”

“Love you too. And, um...thank you for accepting me.” He adds, his cheeks going a little red.

Chloe feels warm inside. She wants to feel this way for the rest of her life. Post-mutual-coming-out bliss.

“Thank you for accepting me, too.”

+++

 

**Chloe, today**

 

Chloe jumps ten feet in the air when she hears the doorbell ring. She’s sitting with Sabrina in Adrien’s bedroom; her cross-legged on his bed and Sabrina lying down on the floor, scrolling through Pinterest.

“Oh, fuck,” Chloe mutters. “Is that her? That’s probably her. There’s no way that’s not her.”

“Relax, Chlo.” Sabrina stretches her limbs and sits up with an elongated grunt. “It probably _is_ her, but you won’t have to have an actual conversation with her. She’s gonna be modeling the whole time.”

“That’s the problem!” Chloe whisper-yells. “I’m gonna have to sit and watch her pose in fencing outfits for two hours and then I’m gonna start seeing her face all over billboards! My life is _over,_ Sabrina.”

“Your life is over because your crush is gonna be up on billboards?” Sabrina raises an eyebrow. “You really are a gay disaster.”

Chloe hears the front doors open and footsteps in the foyer. 

“Welcome, Kagami.” Gabriel’s voice is muffled through Adrien’s bedroom door. He keeps talking before Kagami has a chance to respond. “We’ll be having the shoot in my office in front of green screens. Your first outfit is sitting on the white table just inside. There’s a bathroom to the left of the main staircase for you to change into it.”

“Thank you, M. Agreste,” Chloe hears Kagami’s reply. Light footsteps sound for a moment, followed by the sound of a closing door.

“Oh, I should introduce myself,” an unfamiliar feminine voice announces. “I’m Himari Sakakibara, Kagami’s bodyguard. I’ll be staying with her until it’s time to go.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I am Gabriel Agreste, Adrien Agreste’s father.”

Silence.

Chloe exhales loudly after realizing she’d forgotten to breathe for the whole duration of that exchange. 

She yelps when the bedroom door opens. Adrien walks in, wearing brand-new fencing gear, minus the helmet. It’s all black, which Chloe has never seen before.

“Jeez, are you okay?” he asks her, shutting the door behind him. Chloe places a hand to her chest in relief.

“She hasn’t been okay the entire time we’ve been here,” Sabrina remarks teasingly. 

“You’re _sure_ Kagami’s okay with me being here?” Chloe asks Adrien nervously. “I’m pretty sure she, like, hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Chlo.” Adrien sits next to her on the bed. “She just...didn’t like you when she first moved here because of your, um, past reputation. When she Googled akumas and superheroes and stuff, it still showed that you caused a lot of problems, and--”

“You’re not that Chloe anymore, though,” Sabrina jumps in quickly. She knows that Chloe doesn’t like thinking about the way she used to act. 

“Right. Sorry, Chloe,” Adrien places a hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “And, Kagami knows you aren’t like that anymore, too. She actually wants to talk to you after the shoot is over.”

Chloe feels a shiver run down her back. “She wants to do what now?”

“She wants to apologize for misjudging you, that’s all.” Adrien stands, turning and holding a hand out to Chloe. “It’s almost time for the shoot to start, are you good to come down?”

Sabrina stands too, shooting a soft glance at Chloe.

How is she supposed to sit still knowing that the cute girl modeling new fencing gear wants to talk to her after the shoot? Jesus. She takes a deep breath. Chloe takes Adrien’s hand and lets him pull her up onto her feet. 

“Yeah, I’m good.”

 

+++

 

**Kagami**

 

Not only is Chloe actually harmless, she’s _definitely_ afraid of Kagami.

She’s sitting with her orange-haired friend, behind the photographer, facing Adrien and herself. Chloe hasn’t been able to take her eyes off of Kagami, except for when they make eye contact. Then, she looks away as quickly as she can and her face turns a very noticeable shade of red. That’s fear if Kagami’s ever seen it before.

It’s cute, but Kagami doesn’t know what to do with that thought, so she elects to ignore it.

As the photographer moves lights around and instructs her to make different poses and facial expressions, Kagami wonders seriously about why Chloe is afraid of her. The previous glares in their study hall class? The fact that she’s a fencer? Kagami is at a loss.

“All right, hold these sabres and stand apart from one another. Summon combatant’s fury into your chests, I want you to look angry at each other. There...yes! Perfect. Now, hold that...excellent. Yes, bravo.”

Above all, Kagami can’t believe she doesn’t feel angry towards her parents, especially right now. She doesn’t have the urge to destroy a training dummy. She doesn’t quite feel content, but she feels...okay. Bored out of her mind, but _okay._

She does feel bad that Chloe is scared of her, though. Every now and then, as she’s holding a pose, she’ll give Chloe a quick glance and try her best to smile at her. Chloe smiles back but still goes red in the face. This puzzles Kagami. Happy fear?

“All right, break time! You’re doing marvelous!” announces the photographer, powering down his camera and briskly exiting the room. Gabriel and his dark-haired assistant follow him wordlessly.  
Kagami lets out a sigh of relief, pulling off the fencing helmet and giving Adrien a grateful smile.

“I’m gonna sit over here with Chloe and Sabrina until the break’s over,” Adrien tells her, pulling his helmet off and pointing behind him. His hair sticks up everywhere. He looks like Chat Noir, which Kagami thinks is amusing. 

“Do you wanna join me?” he adds in question.

Kagami nods, not too keen on sitting by herself across the room from three other people.

She follows Adrien to the plastic fold-out chairs set up behind the photographer’s camera. She’s itching to change back into her regular clothes and just go home. Her fencing session at the gym is catching up with her, and she’s getting tired. As they approach, Chloe’s face begins to redden again. Kagami sits in the empty chair beside her. Adrien sits in the one beside the redhead, Sabrina, pulling his phone out of his pocket. 

“You guys are doing a really good job,” Sabrina says, crossing her legs. She looks at Kagami. “I’m surprised this is your first day on the job, you seem like a natural!”

Kagami knows Sabrina means it as a compliment, but she can’t help the way her words sting. She doesn’t want to be a natural at anything but fencing. Trying to make her grimace seem like a smile, she utters a weak “thank you.” 

Chloe’s hands are tucked underneath her thighs, and she’s staring down at her knees. Kagami wants to say something friendly but doesn’t know where to start. She’s not good at this sort of thing. Whatever sort of thing this is. Sabrina and Adrien talk idly to each other for the remainder of the rest break while Chloe and Kagami listen silently. Kagami has never seen herself as an awkward person, but, right now, well…

She almost feels her own face going red. Heat spreads across her cheeks and she coughs into her hand, trying to fill the quiet air with some sort of sound. She and Chloe both startle when the office door opens and the photographer returns, followed by Gabriel and his assistant. 

“All right, only an hour left!” The photographer declares loudly, clapping his hands together. Kagami doesn’t like how cheerful he is. “Let’s do this, shall we?”

Kagami groans quietly and stands, stretching her arms out. She exchanges an exasperated glance with Adrien, and they both make their way to the table, picking up their third-to-last outfits. _You’re almost done, Kagami. You can do this._

It occurs to her that she’d been forgetting to use Adrien’s coping techniques for the shoot. She had them memorized at this point, but in the stress of actually doing the modeling, it had slipped her mind to exercise them.

One: Remember you’re getting paid by the minute.

The camera flashes. It’s starting to hurt Kagami’s eyes.

Two: Ladybug just came in here and told you the fate of Paris rests in your hands. You have to do it. Are you willing to let down the whole of Paris?

Two doesn’t seem to help her. She changes her pose at the will of the photographer.

Three: Bring snacks and take any time you can to yourself. 

She’d already failed that one. She changes into a different outfit.

Four: Reward yourself after the photoshoot is over.

I will, Kagami decides, but I’ll need to figure out how.

Kagami doesn’t make eye contact with Chloe anymore after the break. At first, she thinks it’s to help Chloe feel less intimidated, but she later realizes that it was because she couldn’t.

But she can’t understand for the life of her why that was.


End file.
